ActiveReports 6 and the GrapeCity Factor - A look back and what to expect in future

With the soon to be launched ActiveReports 6, this seems an appropriate time to take a step back and look at what the GrapeCity acquisition has meant for Data Dynamics and what it implies for the future.

The ActiveReports 6 launch marks a major milestone in two respects. Firstly, it is a reflection of the commitment to not only continue the product development and support but in fact, take ActiveReports, Data Dynamics Reports and Data Dynamics Analysis to the next level in terms of their strategic direction and overall product features, quality and support.

Taking a look back
Early in January this year, an exhaustive customer survey provided direct inputs to help us improve in all respects - the product themselves, the web site and the affiliate services. One of the direct results of that survey was the “Join the Buzz” Web site that features a number of customer testimonials and real life case study examples.

Following that, in late April, Data Dynamics Reports and Data Dynamics Analysis were launched with new pricing along with new product bundles along with better content to help customers differentiate and make it easier to choose which product best met their needs. These changes have been well received.

Included with the ActiveReports 6 Launch
Looking to the immediate future, with the ActiveReports 6 launch, customers can expect a significantly improved web site with the goal of improving on three fundamental levels:

1. Clearer differentiation and product comparisons that make it real easy to understand where to use each product
2. Better and more detailed product information with more screenshots and demos with easy links into the product documentation for even more details
3. An easier buying process with number of online Upgrade options so that existing customers can more easily upgrade to the latest versions or to the new suites.

What to expect in future
In the coming months and years, customers can look forward to continued innovation, both on existing products as well as the launch of new products and extensions, better integration between them and with Microsoft technologies such as Microsoft Silverlight and better integration with Microsoft’s own Business Intelligence technologies.

Today, the ActiveReports Suite is the only complete set of Reporting and BI tools for Microsoft Visual Studio and .NET and thanks to the joint research and development within GrapeCity and Data Dynamics (now part of GrapeCity), the depth and breadth of these technologies are poised for a dramatic increase in the coming months and years.

About GrapeCity and ActiveReports

When GrapeCity acquired Data Dynamics late last year and the GrapeCity name started appearing in all Data Dynamics promotions, it was a relatively unknown name for a number of customers who probably wondered who GrapeCity was.

As it turns out, GrapeCity's name is very familiar to a number of US and international Component and Developer Tool vendors.

The Very Beginning
After being founded in 1980 in Japan, the first product it developed was a school accounting software in the years before Microsoft Windows 1.0 came out, that today is a Microsoft case study on how develop large scale enterprise class .NET systems and has about 80% of the Japanese market for enterprise class education back office management for schools, colleges and universities.

Launch of Developer Tools and Components business
Soon after, the company realized that there was a big untapped market for Microsoft Windows based developer tools and components in Japan and Asia. It proceeded to do two things: First, it partnered with premier component and tools vendors to localize, sell and support their products in Japan and secondly, it proceeded to design and develop software products specifically for the Japanese market.

You might recognize the familiar third-party products listed on the GrapeCity Japan's Tools web site.

The Data Dynamics/ActiveReports Connection
GrapeCity started localizing and selling ActiveReports in Japan soon after the first ActiveX/COM version was released in 1996. Similar stories were repeated with other component vendors.

A little known fact behind the proven multi-language support and high overall quality of ActiveReports that customers often mention is the fact that every ActiveReports release is rigorously tested and "certified" by GrapeCity's own QA and testing teams in Japan before release. Not surprisingly, the English versions of the product also benefit from this internal quality process.

Today, as a matter of fact, GrapeCity is the world's largest component vendor by size and revenue. It has about 1000 employees taking care of diverse businesses.

Founding principles
But, more importantly, it is steadfastly committed to its founding principles of delivering uncompromising quality and paying the greatest attention to product details and keeping customer satisfaction above everything else, thanks to the years of market leadership in the highly demanding Japanese market.

A dated but an interesting article on GrapeCity appeared in the February 2006 issue of the Visual Studio Magazine.

GrapeCity as an Independant Software Vendor (ISV)
Other than software components and developer tools of its own, GrapeCity has developed the School Management system mentioned earlier. It has also developed a number of financial accounting software products, Banking systems for Mongolian banks and the government and ERP like systems for mid-size businesses.

Other Solution and Service Offerings
Other than developing software solutions, GrapeCity's other business units offer custom software development services, ERP and CRM implementation services and other technical services for its global clients, primarily on the Microsoft platform. GrapeCity has been a long time Microsoft Technology Adoption Partner Program member and a former Regional Director of Microsoft in Japan, China and India. Its technical teams have presented as speakers in Microsoft conferences such as Tech Ed and PDC in these countries and GrapeCity has been one of Microsoft's preferred solution providers in these countries.

Another area of expertise of GrapeCity is in the areas of Microsoft Office, SharePoint and Infopath solutions where it was the only company from Asia invited by Microsoft for the Office 2003 beta conference for selected global partners. GrapeCity builds and sells enterprise class workflow solutions on top of Microsoft Office and SharePoint platform.

This aspect of GrapeCity is described in this book on "Partnering with Microsoft", published in 2005. The employee numbers and revenue numbers are dated but the article still provides a pretty good overview of the company in the Microsoft context.

One can learn more at http://www.grapecity.com/.

ActiveReports rapid XML processing options

Chillisoft describe in their latest blog on how they leverage the flexible code model of ActiveReports to roll an optimized XML+XSLT solution.

----Extract---
ActiveReports provides the XMLDataSource option for sourcing your data from xml. My knowledge of all its ins and outs is not substantial, but I ran into two significant problems in a recent project which led me towards an alternative, innovative approach.

The first problem is that an xml document does not guarantee a structure like a database does. Xml’s flexibility in the layout of elements is beautiful on one hand but hard to fit into a report that expects a fixed structure.

The second problem in my case was the use of sub-reports to cover for different structures in the xml document. I won’t get fully into the detail, but where an element holds recurring sub-items, you can use sub-reports to list all the items. The trouble is that a significant number of sub-reports kill your report generation performance. I had a particular problem where my first report would take 15 seconds to generate on the server, and then degrade by another 5 seconds every time I ran it again. This is of course totally unacceptable for a frequently used report.

Here then was my innovation … combine ActiveReports and XSLT. ActiveReports provides the RichTextBox, which has an Html property to which you can assign the Html you generate from your XSLT.

Read the full blog posting.