Hello, Yes, we had some experience with Actuate and it was.. BAD
Actually we used version 4.1, used to be called ERW, but we also tested version 5 and we had the same problems First, the one that really had us change to FOP (after wasting money on Actuate), text inside Actuate produced table cells DOES NOT WRAP. The text is simply written on the neighbor cells Also, when the data source for the report is the application not the database directly, it is very difficult to program it. You'll get very frustrated having to create lots of Interfaces, ... You'll also have to launch the Actuate application from your own code in order to create the report templates, you will not be able to use it directly as an API to crate such templates (or use another standard tool, e.g. and XSL editor like in FOP). A job that will NOT be funny As for FOP (XSLT/XSLFO combination) You not only get the maximum flexibility and the standardization, but the performance is actually very good. You also have the ease and flexibility to get the data in the form of XML the way you want it (quite a lot of XML api's/tools out there. Want my advice: Go directly for XML/XSLT/XSLFO/FOP and save your company's money -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 12, 2002 2:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: FOP vs. Actuate Java Edition Hello all, Recently we had a sales demo of the Actuate Java Edition reporting tool. The tool provides a Swing interface to assist in formatting the layout, and it also can connect to RDBMS data sources to provide drag-n-drop additions of report data elements. We're currently planning on using an FOP-based solution for our reporting needs. We built a fairly optimized FOP architecture which performs well -- complex PDF pages are rendered at the rate of approximately 2 pages per second on an Intel 750 MHz box. Question: Does anybody out there have any experience with the Actuate Java Edition tool? The GUI format designer would be nice, but I'm guessing notY as flexible as using XSL stylesheets as in FOP. Also, would it perform better than the FOP, as in being faster or using less memory? I know the Actuate tool can provide a table of contents, which is known to cause problems when using FOP -- but I don't know if the Actuate tool suffers the same problem (sales demos use small reports). Any insight is greatly appreciated. -Ryan
