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Generating Word Reports / Documents. Generate Word documents by appling XSLT on XML data. Introduction (ramble)Another boring day in my life. I often wonder why it has to be like this – I either have no obligations at all, or I'm packed with them.
I am developing one android application in which I need to generate different types of reports in various format. I want to generate reports in PDF, XLS, DOC and Text. Use the Schematic and Hierarchy viewers to analyze and cross probe the design Course Outline. Lab 4: Vivado Reports – Generate the Timing Summary report and.
An Example Of A Schematic Report For example, BOM report for components marked 'OP STA 2'. Wild-cards are supported. Once you pick Named Location, type the.
How to generate schematic and panel reports, change the report format, save a report to a file, and place a report on a drawing. Generate Schematic Report Click. Vivado Design Suite Tool Flow. Vivado Reports – Generate the Timing Summary report and. Synthesize the design and use the Schematic and Hierarchy.
Most people tell me that it has to do with planning. They wear their favorite serious face and say: you, my son, just don't know how to properly make your schedule. Time is the essence, do not use it improperly! You must divide your time in million little pieces, label each one of them, implement some kind of sorting, import everything into Microsoft Outlook, and stick to that plan. Then, and only then, you'll be a man who is not a campaigner, but an organized, equally time pressured ! Think about it – everything important was created in just those few seconds after the Big Bang.
All that followed was just plain simple boring processes of waiting for the fruits of planted seeds to grow; the stage setting for another big moment. So, I hope you'll agree that it is – as Derek Ager once wrote – like the life of a soldier.. One can just hope that those . Apart from praise for the Access report building capabilities, you won't hear many compliments for the reporting tools.
I guess we have all tried Crystal Reports embedded into Visual Studio . NET - they are OK, but are demanding. And often, small bugs, along with ridiculous option placements, will drive you nuts.
SQL Reporting Services are somewhat a new option that is praised all over the web by Microsoft evangelists. In practice, however, I've often stumbled on projects where the team is paralyzed with problems concerning configuration and specific aspects of report writing. Finally, there are numerous custom reporting frameworks such as Active. Reports or Dev. Express' (I love these guys) Reporting Tools. Specific maladies aside, the common problem with all the previously laid options is that they have a modest learning curve.
I'm not talking about the time needed to acquire the knowledge for generating a list of employees from an . I'm talking about the time needed to acquire the knowledge for developing real- life reports which have three tables that properly expand and contract (along with its columns and rows) over pages. Also, none of these options provide you with the solution for frequent user requirements – when a report is rendered, it should be possible to modify it a bit. The workaround is to use report exporting to popular formats that are known to most users, like Word.
As I've experienced, this is the point when the bulb shines above the head of the developer and the idea comes - why not generate reports in Word in the first place. In the majority of projects, clients are provided with the needed output reports in Word format, which they print and fill by hand.
Word's file format was not publicly available, and all utilities that could parse it were mostly developed by reverse- engineering, or by stealing using documentation available to Microsoft partners. You can guess that results weren't too satisfying.. However, in 2. 00. Microsoft introduced XML formats for storing Office documents. Those formats were succeeded by Office Open XML formats in Office 2. So, in order to generate a Word file now, you basically need to apply the appropriate XSLT (XSL Transform) onto the XML data used in a report. This process can be divided into several operational steps: Defining the XML schema based on the report.
Binding data from the Word document to the appropriate fields in XML schema. Saving the Word document in Word. ML format and the generation of XSLT using the WML2. XSLT tool. Retrieving the needed data from a source (mostly a SQL Server database), it's structuring into appropriate XMLApplying XSLT onto XML data in order to generate the Word document, which then can be further manipulated (sending over wire, displaying to user, and similar)The biggest problem is to produce valid XSLT; from five steps, three are taken to do that. The generation of XML is far easier, while the transformation is completely trivial.
Producing the XSL transformation. Defining the XML schema based on the report. In order to start making the report, it is required to define the necessary data. A picture talks more than a thousand words, an example talks almost an equal amount.. Then we have, from the developer point of view, an interesting table of invoice items.. The structure of the XML which will hold this data is described using an XML schema.
Visual Studio 2. 00. IDE, take option File –> New –> File (CTRL+N): this gives a list of possible document types from which we choose XML Schema. An element from the Toolbox should then be dragged- and- dropped on the workspace and filled with content. This process is shown on the picture that follows: Figure 2 – Schema that defines the structure of data for the report. In order to be properly mapped, items on the invoice need to be described as child elements of the Invoice entity. Add - > New element from the context menu shown after right click gives the option to perform this action. Figure 3 – Adding a child to the Invoice entity.
Adding the rest of the elements, assigning types to variables, and setting the target. Namespace (in the Properties window) gets the job done.
Assigning types to variables is optional in most cases – if you use special formats for printing out documents (like dd. MM. yyyy) or monetary values ($1. XML with the data. On the other hand, setting the target. Namespace shouldn't be optional – the produced schema will get the default value http: //tempuri. XMLSchema. xsd. We can put aside the rules of good practice that tells us not to use the http: //tempuri.
Word's schema library can't hold two different schemas with the same namespace. So, be sure to set the target. Namespace (the convention http: //Organization/Project/Schema.
Name. xsd is used mostly) before you close the definition. Figure 4 – Resulting XML schema. Binding data from the Word document to the appropriate fields in the XML schema.
Schema importing is performed by using the XML Structure dialog. In the 2. 00. 3 version of Office Word, this dialog is accessible through Task Pane (CTRL+F1); it should be chosen from the list shown when clicked on the triangle in the header (left from the small x). If schemas aren't previously imported, and the Template and Add- Ins option is chosen, the picture that follows will faithfully resemble the resulting state of the screen. Figure 5 – Adding the new XML schema in the Word document.
In the dialog shown after clicking on the Add Schema button, it is needed to point to the location of the defined XML schema. Its fields will be then shown in the XML Structure dialog, from where they are further bound to the document data. Before starting that sweet job, some additional options should be set: Check Ignore mixed content – This allows mixing data from the XML with data from the document. As documents are almost always made of fixed and variable parts, this avoids frequent signalization by Word that between the data defined in the XML schema there are .
For example, if some data from the XML is used twice in the document, Word will signal error in validation because according to the XML schema, that data appears only once. The same problem happens with order. This is present to force valid entry of data in the Word document (another application of the technique that is being described). However, our current goal is diametrically opposite – we are not marking fields for entry, but for space in which data from the XML will be inserted, so it's not needed to force a unique appearance and order. Figure 6 – Dialog for setting XML data.
After the schema is imported in to the document and the options set, it's time to move onto binding the schema and the data. Initially, only the root element (in our case, Invoice) is available. After choosing it, Word will offer options for assigning the schema to the appropriate range in the document. Figure 7 – Options for applying the schema on the appropriate range in the document. In this example, applying the schema to the entire document is a needed option (possible multi- schematic Word files aren't interesting from the reporting point of view). Now, what is left is to mark the data – the selected text is bound to the schema either by choosing the field from the Task Pane, or by using the option Apply XML Element shown after a right click.
Figure 8 – Binding data from a Word document to fields of the XML schema. Two things are interesting here. First, to define child items, you need to select and map the whole row in the table to the Invoice. Items element, after which Name and Price will be available for bounding to the cell's data.
If the document contains a large number of items, there is no need to map every single row; mapping just the first row is fine, the rest can be deleted. The structure of report, not the content, is what matters at the moment. Second, Word, for previously explained reasons, signals error for double usage of the Buyer element (look at the picture). It'll cause problems later, during the generation of the XSLT, but we can omit that problem for now (if Allow saving as XML even if not valid is checked in the XML options). Saving into Word. ML and the generation of XSLTThe marked document contains all the data needed for the generation of valid XSLT. The WML2. XSLT tool accepts Word.
ML as input, so it's required to save the Word document in this format. You can do this by using the Save As option from the File menu – when the dialog is shown in Save as Type, choose XML document (*.
The option Apply transform is used in the opposite direction, Data only when XML data is fetched from the document, so both fields should be left unchecked. The prepared WML file is processed using this statement in the Command Prompt (the following is valid assuming that everything is in the same directory): WML2. XSLT. exe . One exception is when an element from the XML with data is used multiple times.