[Mono-list] Visual report designer, Message queue server...

[Joe Mozelesky]

Hello list,   So, it seems Mono/Gtk#/Gnome et. al. have progressed quite a bit in the past year, and I have been examining once again the possibility of developing an application for the Gnome platform.  At one point in time I wanted to be cross-platform, but now I’d really like to just focus on something with good Gnome integration.   There are a few things I am trying to track down or determine if they exist etc. as I conduct my little architecture “feasibility” study (err, me, sitting at my laptop w/ Google and the list J).   The first thing I am trying to discover is a visual report designer, something along the lines of Crystal Reports, maybe not as feature rich, but usable by an end-user / non-programmer-hacker.  The intent here is that end user might want to go in and place their company logo on a report, or move a field over to print in the right spot on their pre-printed form.  There is a commercial .NET component called Active Reports that also looks kind of like what I am looking for, but of course this is not of much use when releasing an app under GPL or similar license.  Someone had pointed me to a Gnome app called Agorra reports, but it is not quite what I am looking for.  It would also be nice to have sub-reports capability.  So, I’m not sure if something like this exists, Google has not turned up much.  Someone just made a patch with libgda bindings for Gtk#, so the back-end is there, although I’m not sure quite what the capabilities of libgda-report is at this point but…it is the front-end I am wondering about.   What would be neat is to have a standard back-end reporting server, that would let end user for instance request Income Statement report in different formats for instance, PDF, HTML (web report), etc. with different styles i.e. if Income Statement is viewed over web use style A, if Income Statement is included in Annual Report in desktop-publishing app then use style B, or for instance I want to view Income Statement report in Gnumeric to play with numbers so output to Gnumeric with no styles, just plain.  Or for instance, say I am going on flight across the country, but before I go I want to pull a 120-day aged receivables report merged with customer contact information to my iPaq in PDF format so I can chase up people for money on my cell phone, etc.   I am intrigued with Bonobo and components.  It would be pretty neat to be able to drop the report designer component onto my application window as an embeddable component.  And then to be able to cut-and-paste say a section of cells from Gnumeric into a report, or an image, etc.   The second thing I am looking into is if there is some equivalent to Microsoft Message Queue / IBM MQSeries / Sun ONE Message Queue Server that is integrated into Gnome w/ C# bindings (Gnome Message Queue?)...   So basically, looking out on the long range, here is kind of the point that I am looking at trying to get to now:    I want to have a complete low-mid range business management suite, i.e. accounting, invoicing, CRM, with a plug-in architecture for vertical market functionality.  So Person A can say, ok I run a regional landscaping company, and I have an office with a few people doing administrative stuff, and a small sales staff.  Instead of spending $50,000 for software from Joe, Joe has this CDROM with Joe’s Business App for Landscaping all preconfigured with an operating system and everything.  Now, all I have to do is pay Joe for his time to come install it for me.  Or maybe I don’t even have to pay Joe, I can just put this CDROM in and go through the wizard and boom!  I am running my business on Linux and I have all of these cool features, it is easier to use than PeachTree or Quickbooks, and my accountant loves me (ok, well maybe that is too easy…)  Or another good example, is Person B runs a small HVAC/refrigeration company.  He has 15 guys working for him who go out on service calls, installation, etc., a business development person, a salesperson, and a couple of administrative people at his office.  Instead of dropping tens of thousands for MS CRM w/ Service mgmt + QuickBooks/PeachTree/MAS90 etc. + some HVAC custom add-on + … + etc., Instead he can pop in a CDROM and boom! He has business management plus service management/scheduling for his worker guys, plus CRM for his sales and biz development guy, plus then he puts the CD in on his server and goes through the wizard and now he has a secure Linux-based remote sales and scheduling capability via Apache + LDAP + Evolution + etc. i.e. his guys can use their PalmPilot or iPaq to find their schedule etc.  But it will be scalable enough that Person C might own a distribution company with sales offices in 20 states, 15 warehouses, a fleet of trucks, and a staff of 1,000 and the app could be implemented there as well.   So in order to build the above type of solution, I am looking to see if the Reporting and message queue requirements could be solved “off-the-shelf” now, or if I have to either just wait awhile or attempt to write a visual designer from scratch (which I am dreading because Gtk scares me J and I think some custom widgets would be needed which I’m not sure could be done using C#) and just use a home grown message queue server (not a big deal, really)… The alternative option is just to say screw it, if you have pre-printed forms then tough luck, and make all the reports using XML output to HTML, and if you want to put your company logo in there etc. then edit the stylesheet/template…  In some sense also maybe I am putting the cart before the horse in that I have a lot of development time before it will be time to design reports…   Thanks,   Joe