Carl Ganz, Jr.
The Chapter 6 - "ActiveReports for VB6 and .NET" starts with a "Helllo World" like sample using ActiveReports, then moves onto exploring the RPX reporting format, followed by discussing ActiveReport's support for XML data source.
After examining the XML files and related code samples, Carl jumps into the printing and paging capabilities of ActiveReports. After covering the printing basics of ActiveReports, the chapter covers the now well known code-behind event based programming model of ActiveReports in some detail. he discusses the key events, and creates sample projects to trace the flow of events as they are triggered.
Once the reader is familiar with the basic reporting elements, the chapter builds an actual report using sample code to illustrate how they all come together.
Following this, Carl explains the different types of reports that can be built using ActiveReports. He covers:
- Mailing Labels
- Plain Text Documents
- Unbound reports
- Graphics and shading
Then he covers the export capabilities of ActiveReports and discusses spreadsheet export features.
The chapter closes by discussing the .NET version of ActiveReports and comparing the programming interface with the ActiveX version and also reviews the web viewer control.
Overall, although ActiveReports has come a long way since then, the book provides a great coverage of the product in a real concise manner, while still covering enough details to provide a really nice introduction.
