Produce HTML Reporting Output with WebBroker Components By Bob Swart, Delphi Pro
The WebBroker technology introduced in Delphi 3 Client/Server is based on the concept that a Web server application can respond to multiple incoming requests (mapped to Web action items). Each request triggers and executes a Web action item, and dynamic HTML is generated during the execution. WebBroker contains a number of support classes and components, such as PageProducers and TableProducers, that facilitate the HTML generation in Web server applications, but there's nothing stopping us from using these same components to produce HTML in regular Windows applications.
Many reporting tools produce reports the old-fashioned way—on paper, but I want to produce reports in HTML (or in the future in XML or XHTML) in my Win32 apps.
Use the WebBroker PageProducer and TableProducer components (found in Delphi, C++Builder, and Kylix) to produce static HTML pages for reporting. Using this method, you can produce reports on disk and view them on screen in a Windows GUI application.
Do online reporting techniques and technologies move us closer to the paperless-office age? Is trying to move to a paperless office a losing battle? Let us know in the DevX discussion groups!
