If the piece that is slowing you down is writing the parsing (in Perl), you may want to look at xconvert.
http://www.unidex.com/xflat.htm Maybe you could use it to do the text to XHTML conversion. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 3:37 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: Reporting Solutions On this topic... I have a slew of reports that get generated on our AS/400... If anyone knows a tool that would do a nice job of scrapping the text output into html it would be a great help. The 400 FTP's the reports over to an intranet server when it runs them. The server then parses them in perl to produce nicer HTML pages. If I had an easier solution I could move more of them over faster... If anyone has any ideas let me know! Thanks -----Original Message----- From: brhoads [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Friday, June 14, 2002 3:16 PM To: struts-user Subject: Reporting Solutions This is a summary of my research and testing of reporting solutions. I've gotten a lot of help here. So I hope this information will be useful. My requirements were to be able to run reports (ideally Crystal Reports) via JSP, ideally on a Linux box. If a Crystal Reports solution couldn't be found, I needed a cost effective alternative with similar ease of use and power as Crystal. First, the latest version of Crystal Enterprise will under Solaris (not Linux) but the license starts at 20-40K. Sometime ago, I made pretty good progress by building Java wrapper classes for the CR COM Object. It was pretty difficult to figure out a lot things and at some point I got stuck trying to retrieve & set the report parms programmatically. The biggest problem with this was that I had to send the Oracle userid & password as part of the query string. And of course I still needed the reports running on an NT server. If you're interested in a making wrappers for COM Objects, see http://www.infozoom.de. Another option that also requires an NT server is Parallel Crystal. It's also too expensive, but may be a good solution if you need scalability. Parallel Crystal Pricing: http://www.dynalivery.com/products/parallelcrystal/pricing.html Parallel Crystal Architecture: http://www.dynalivery.com/products/parallelcrystal/parallelcrystal2_6.html#a rchitecture I also looked at Actuate (http://www.actuate.com/products/server/index.asp). I can't find my pricing notes, but it was expensive. They did an email campaign saying "Instantly Convert Crystal Reports". But they don't have a converter in their system, it's a manual conversion service. I considered http://sourceforge.net/projects/jasperreports/, but determined that's it's not mature enough to give to our clients. Looks promising though. I found two options that would require writing reports from scratch, as they don't support or convert Crystal. The first is JReports. It was quite a while ago that I look at JReports, so I don't remember a lot of details to pass on. But I do remember that I liked it and it would be option, if I abandoned Crystal. Tech support was very good. Corporate Background: http://www.jinfonet.com/corporate.htm JReport Overview: http://www.jinfonet.com/JReportOverviewWeb.ppt JReport Product Brochure: http://www.jinfonet.com/JReportFlyer.pdf JReport Product Overview: http://www.jinfonet.com/products.htm JReport Tutorial: http://www.jinfonet.com/help/tutorial.htm Free Download: http://www.jinfonet.com/download.htm Other Docs http://www.jinfonet.com/docs.htm Register for Evaluation: http://www.jinfonet.com/JReportRegister.htm JReport Enterprise Server 2 conc. users/reports 1 CPU $3,500 Annual Maintenance $700 JReport Enterprise Server, unlimited for 1 CPU $19,000 Annual Maintenance $3,800 You can also choose to license only a specific number of CPUs. For example, it is possible to purchase a 2 CPU license for a 4 CPU computer. Likewise, it is also possible to purchase a 4 CPU license for a 2 CPU computer to anticipate future expansion. The other alternative to Crystal that I found is FlexReports. It's basically a Java-based Crystal knock-off. If you know Crystal, you can use FlexReports. The only thing I found that wasn't completely intuitive is that parm fields have to be placed on the report, although they are invisible. The limitations I found with FlexReports are: 1. No way to programmatically get a list of parameters from a .flx. 2. No way to force a page break. 3. No way to use the viewer as an applet. 4. No PDF support. Tech support was 1st class. Pricing is done on a case by case basis. But here's what I found. (BTW - I didn't sign any non-disclosure on any of the info I'm providing.) Development License 1 developer license = 459 USD To avail discount on developer licenses, purchase our team licenses: 4 Team license (4 developer licenses) = 918 USD 8 Team license (8 developer licenses) = 1836 USD Maintenance License The Maintenance License fee is for a period of 6 months. Maintenance license is priced at USD 1250 . Maintenance would include the following benefits for a period of 6 months Free technical support through email and Instant Messaging. Hot fixes through email notification. Free upgrades of the New Releases, If any Please note that this maintenance license is applicable for a period of 6 months only. You would have to purchase the same again for extended support beyond this period. Runtime License Runtime License price for each sale of your product developed using VisualSoft FlexiReports USD 999 When I started my research Crystal Clear had to many holes to consider. But now with version 3, I have my solution! Crystal Clear 3.0 provides a Java-based Crystal Reports compatible engine, well 90% compatible anyway; see http://www.inetsoftware.de/English/Produkte/CrystalClear/Default.htm. Not only did Crystal Clear turn out to be my best solution, it also turned out to be the cheapest. How often does that happen?! $1290 for 1 CPU, unlimited clients. See http://www.inetsoftware.de/English/scripts/FrameSetSub.asp?path=http://www.i netsoftware.de/English/Produkte/CrystalClear/Lizenzen/&name=pricing_info rmat ion.htm. Besides missing one feature that one of our reports needs, the only other problem I've found is that it doesn't prompt for parms used in only in formulas. You can work around that though by putting the parm on the report & setting it's format option to suppressed. HTH. Feel free to ask questions. Brad Rhoads Zethcon Corporation -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
