Exactly! Moreover, you can reuse your already existing XML file. The data is not the one changing but the format for generating the report and maybe the report layout (maybe depending on the selected format)
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeremias Maerki [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Tuesday, 14 January 2003 5:54 PM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Big Small Doubt
On 14.01.2003 04:51:13 VipinJ wrote:
>
> >But I think you're mixing things here. You're talking about a HTML
> >preview and you're talking about Excel. Is that linked together
> somehow?
> >What are trying to accomplish?
>
> The clients need the same report in 3 formats :
> PDF
> HTML
> Excel
>
> We are doing an MIS for a leading airline.
> There are around 80 reports.
> So what we are trying to do is to reuse the same FOP code to generate
> HTML and Excel reports.
>
> If this is not successful, we will have to add 80+80=160 new files.
> :-))
I know how you must feel with this prospect. Roberto Calero is right
about his observations in general, but I'd like to add a few points:
- Every report you generate also has to be in Excel format. I guess that
means that every report is primarily a table of data. So all 80
reports are probably more or less the same to a certain degree. What
you could try is to find a common denominator on the data you have to
generate the report. What I want to say is this: If you can come up
with a common XML format (not XSL:FO, HTML or something like that,
your own XML format) in which you can map every or most of your 80
reports, then you might be in a position where you only have to write
only one single XSLT for each output format (HTML, XSL-FO and
CSV/Excel). I guess you already have to do a lot of copy/paste when
you create your XSLT if you haven't sorted out a common stylesheet
library already.
MIS report data (XML)
+---+---> XSLT ---> HTML
+---> XSLT ---> CSV (alternative 1)
+---> XSLT ---> Gnumeric XML ---> Cocoon/POI ---> XLS
¦ (alternative 2)
+---> XSLT ---> XSL-FO ---> FOP ---> PDF
See here for the Cocoon/POI stuff:
http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/userdocs/serializers/xls-serializer.html
- You seem to be wanting to convert XSL-FO to Excel. I don't think this
is a good idea. XSL-FO is made to define a page layout, not to
generate a spreadsheet document. That's simply not what it was made
for. It's better to do this before you get to XSL-FO like I suggest in
the point above.
> So before giving them the estimate, we would like to see how much of
> work is left
>
> That is the intention.
I hope this helps along the way.
Jeremias Maerki
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