Welcome to ActiveReports Version 2.0

CD Contents:

ActiveX Designer

ActiveReports is based on the Active Designer specification, which allows a component to be integrated into the hosting design environment, allowing it to make full use of the environment's services.

The designer is a fully compliant ActiveX control and object host. You can insert any control or OLE object, such as graphs and documents, into your report. OLE objects can be bound to BLOB fields in your database.

Easy to use and familiar user interface

ActiveReports is modeled after Visual Basic's own form designer with some added enhancements. This provides a familiar environment in which you design reports while using a programming language you know.

Familiar Programming Language

ActiveReports uses Visual Basic as its formula language through familiar object based events and methods. This allows you to leverage your Visual Basic skills without having to learn a foreign formula or scripting language.

Small Distribution Overhead

ActiveReports' designer DLL is lightweight and does not require any additional DLLs to distribute.

Powerful Object Model

ActiveReports' objects are exposed through COM for complete control over all aspects of your report. The designer provides an easy to use environment while the object model provides low-level programmable controls, sections and printing options.

Table of Contents and Navigation History objects

The viewer has a programmable table of contents tree that you can create for your report. The user can quickly jump between report sections with the TOC.

Lightweight Internet-enabled Report Viewer ActiveX

The viewer can be used to preview reports on the internet or Intranet with only a small file to download. The viewer provides the same features you get when displaying the reports in your Visual Basic applications.

Export Filters

ActiveReports includes export filters to generate output into Rich Text Format (RTF) for word-processing, Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Excel worksheets, HTML and DHTML for publishing your reports to the internet, TIF for optical archiving and faxing and delimited text for spreadsheets and databases.

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Standard Edition

Report Designer

1. Added mirrored margins and gutters support.
2. Collapsible sections in the designer.
3. Page Setup, Printer and Style definition property sheets. Page settings are saved with the report layout, removing the need to set the printer properties at runtime.
4. Active Scripting (VBScript and Jscript) support for the report and section events. Added script property to Report and Section objects.
5. Added syntax-highlighting editor to edit the event scripts.
6. Report layouts can be saved to XML formated files (.RPX) for easier distribution and creating reusable report templates.
7. Added new Load and Save layout methods to load and save layouts to files or XML strings. This feature can be used to save report layouts into a database.
8. Style editor and Font selection dropdown with added support for printer fonts.
9. Categorized report, section and control properties. The properties can be viewed in Visual Basic's categorized property list view.
10. Added center in section control alignment option.
11. Added Watermark, WatermarkAlignment, WatermarkSizeMode, WatermarkPrintOnPages properties to the report object. The WatermarkPrintOnPages string property is used to specify a list or range of pages on which the watermark will be rendered. If this property is left empty, the watermark will be printed on all pages.
12. Added a property list dockable window, can be used to set report, section and control properties in full-screen view.
13. Microsoft Access Report Import Wizard.
14. New Report Wizard with ADO support.
15. Report Upsizer tool to convert ActiveReports 1.0 reports to ActiveReports 2.0.

Sections

1. Reset page number in groups.
2. Added PrintAtBottom property to group footer and report footer sections.

Controls

1. XML data control: allows you to create reports based on XML data files.
2. Frame control: Easier table layouts and precise control over a control's grow/shrink behavior.
3. Added Barcode control.
4. Added data binding (DataField property) to the image control.
5. Added DataField property to the SubReport control. Subreports can be bound to a recordset field in ADO hierarchical recordsets, unbound fields set to a recordset object in the FetchData event or a sub-nodelist in an XML data source.
6. Field object can contain scripts in the Text property. The text property interprets values starting with '=' character, such as '=Sales/Units', as expressions that are evaluated using the scripting engine.
7. Control Styles based on Cascaded Style Sheets (CSS) syntax. Added Style property to the label and field controls.
8. Added WordWrap property to Field and Label controls.
9. Added Page Break Enabled property.
10. Hyperlink property, supports hyperlink jumps within the report object or external hyperlinks to Internet URLs.
11. Added PictureAlignment and SizeMode to the Ole object control.
12. Added BackStyle property to the RichEdit control.
13. Added Zorder method to all objects as extender method, calling Zorder with 0 will bring object to front, 1 will send object to back.

Runtime

1. Added Controls.RemoveAll method.
2. Added Report.AddControlLicense(ProgID, LicenseKey) to allow adding licensed controls to reports at runtime.
3. Added ParentReport property to ActiveReport object. This property is read-only and available at runtime. This property will return Nothing when accessed in the initialize/terminate events of a subreport object.
4. Added Name (description) to the PaperSizes object.
5. Added StartPage and EndPage methods to the Printer object. These can be used in conjunction with the PrintPage method to print multiple pages on the same page.
6. Added Pages.GetPagesInRange method to return a new pages collection based on a range expression string such as "1-10" or "1-4, 5-6".
7. Pages.Load and Pages.Save methods support loading and saving from/to variant byte arrays.
8. RDF files support password protection.
9. Compressed Report Archive (Compressed RDF).

Viewer

1. Splitters.
2. Multi-page view.
3. Ruler.
4. Search for text.
5. Copy page to clipboard.
6. Hyperlink and MouseOver events.
7. Added DrawTextLink and DrawPictureLink method to the canvas object to support hyperlinked text and images in the canvas object.

Java Viewer

1. Supports the JDK1.3.
2. Added printing support.
3. Added support for compressed and password protected report files (RDF).

Export

1. Table of contents is now exported to PDF files.
2. Added SaveToByteArray to the PDF export filter. PDF files can be written directly to the Response object in ASP using Response.WriteBinary instead of being saved to a file.
3. Added font embedding to the PDF export filter.
4. Hyperlinks are exported to HTML, Excel, PDF and RTF files.
5. Added a TIF image export filter. This filter can be used to fax report output using any third party control libraries.

Professional Edition

End User Designer

1. Uses the same designer interface as the standard ActiveReports.
2. A designer hosting control will allow it to be placed on any VB form implemented as a built-in report designer.
3. The level of integration within the application can be fully customizable.
4. You can disable or enable which toolbars are available to the end user or replace the toolbars with your own.
5. Users can load XML report layout files (.RPX) into the designer and modify them, or create new reports and save and execute them without compiling them first.

WebCache service and ISAPI DLL

1. The webcache service provides a COM interface that allows reports running on web servers to cache their output instead of writing to disk and pushing it to the client browser.
2. The lifetime of cached items is managed by the service and the items are destroyed when they expire.
3. The ISAPI DLL handles the client requests and retrieves the cached output from the service.

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• A platform that supports the Microsoft Visual Studio development environment.
• Microsoft Visual Studio 6.0
• 15MB of hard drive space.