Freeform Reporting tool

Question

I am looking for free form reporting tool.

Free/open source is preferred.

It should work without a data source and one should be able to print at any place on a page.

I need this because I am using an age old but very fast semi RDBMS which does not support concept of Data Set, Data Source, etc. that as required by all reporting engine I saw till date.

It comes as just 2 DLL with a few declaration modules for various languages.

Actually I have been using ComponentOne's VS View for last 6 years and am ver confortable with this. I generally use this component when ever printing is required even in Delphi.

But for this particualr project my Boss will not allow me to use any ActiveX so I am looking for a good & stable freeware solution in VCL.

Answer 1

We use a similar DB and recently started using List & Label. It has its rough edges but generally works quite well. Its core comes as a bunch of DLLs but there is no registration required.

Answer 2

I would look at Fast Reports. Yes, it does have support for datasets, but there is also a "build your own" method by dropping a component on the form and assigning writing 3 events (get field value, next record, is at end of file). I have used this approach many numerous times with Fast Reports against "non" data-aware data without any problems. I believe they have an older version which is open sourced, but the cost of the latest version is reasonable and they do have a trial you can play around with.

Answer 3

Depending on what you are looking for in a free form reporting tool, I have successfully used the WP Tools Reporter add in to generate reports. I fed the data from various locations (it can of course do databases as well), and you can determine whether sections are output or not, etc.

Answer 4

Another alternative is to role your own TDataset or OLEDB driver. Obviously the OLEDB driver is more general and can be used outside Delphi. Both are actually reasonably easy to do on a simple level (although can become much more complicated if desired).

Starting point for writing your own OLEDB driver is the techvanguards optk site.. This is a free source code kit available for download. Although not updated since D5, I wrote a simple provider using Delphi 2006 and with a bit of hacking you should be able to get it working for Delphi 2009.

I cant find an online reference to a tutorial for creating your own custom TDataset, but I once did it following instructions in "Using Delphi 3 - Special Edition" so if you can find a copy of that on the web it has a chapter on creating custom TDatasets. (Edit: As per a comment, here is a good link

Try the OLEDB driver route first though and then you can use the standard delphi TDataset.

Answer 5

Try report manager http://reportman.sourceforge.net/