1. Sponsored by Powered by Moving at the Speed of Change May 2015 Charlotte PowerBuilder Conference Reporting by using RDL from Microsoft An alternative to the DataWindow Report

2. Charlotte PowerBuilder Conference Moving at the Speed of Change May 2015 Text 18pt Reporting by using RDL from Microsoft an alternative to the DataWindow Report Charlotte Powerbuilder Conference I North Carolina I May 6-8, 2015

3. Speaker

4.  S&F Datentechnik company facts  Motivation (to have an alternative to the DataWindow Report)  What is „Report Definition Language“ (RDL)  RDL Tools  RDL and SQL Server Reporting Services (remote mode)  Advantages and options of RDL  Integration of RDL Reports (technology)  Demo Part / Live Part (Tools & Integration)  Conclusion Agenda

5. Founded:1984 Headquarter:Leer (Ostfriesland), Germany Team:More than 40 specialized employees in the fields of computer science, business, chemistry, economic and environmental sciences Experience:Over 30 years of service provider for public administration (KOMVOR) and the waste management industry (EMOS) Installations:More than 400 installations in Germany and Austria Services: Consulting, sales, development, customer service www.sf-datentechnik.dewww.sf-datentechnik.de www.emos-system.de www.komvor.dewww.emos-system.dewww.komvor.de S&F Datentechnik

6. S&F Datentechnik | Products The DEMO/LIVE part is represented in the context of our solution:  EMOS is a modular structured industry solution for waste management The system is divided into areas for commercial disposal sites, waste management tasks in the municipal sector as well as for disposal facilities with integrated mobile solutions.  All our solutions like EMOS or KOMVOR are based on the same framework and support the same feature set for reporting.

7. S&F Datentechnik | Development Tools Tools Powerbuilder/Infomaker/Pocketbuilder/Appeon  Development 17x Powerbuilder, 3x Pocketbuilder, 6x Appeon (Mobile/Web)  Customer Service 10x Infomaker Further Tools  Microsoft Visual Studio (for Development)  Microsoft Report Builder (for Customer Service)  Microsoft Team Foundation Server  Microsoft Dynamics CRM  Madcap Doc-to-Help  Flexera Installshield  Various other tools (e.g. ProDiff, etc.)

8. S&F Datentechnik | Products (Technical View)  Classic Windows applications using PowerBuilder classic 12.6 and PB.NET 12.6 for special areas (like WCF). The development is based on the Powerbuilder Foundation Class with company extensions and uses the PB Ultimate Suite.  Data management using Microsoft SQL Server (2008R2,2012,2014) and Oracle databases (11g,11g R2,12c).  Web applications as a supplement to the Windows applications in the past using PowerBuilder WebForms supporting Internet Explorer (until PB 12.5). Since beginning of this year largely migrated using Appeon Web supporting Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.  Mobile applications as a supplement to the Windows applications in the past via Sybase Pocketbuilder 2.5 and Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere 9.0 for Windows Mobile/CE; currently in final process to support Windows Mobile, Windows CE, iOS and Android using Appeon Mobile and Pocketbuilder (all of them using local SQLite databases).

9. Motivation | Customer View  Localized designer and also localized integrated viewer  Familiar interface of program and environment  Various tools should be available to create or modify reports  Native export at least to Excel (.xlsx), Word (.docx) and PDF Files  The result should be good printouts in a professional and modern design

10.  Less individual adjustments of reports per customer  small change should not have to be performed by a developer  more „Self Service Reporting“ by customers  Less complicated process for change request Classic change request: Motivation | Customer Service View Customer: Can you move the number a little bit to the left? Customer Service: Yes, I will arrange that this is done. Change Request Developer: I did it

11.  Easier creation of reports (as far as possible without making a copy)  More options for creating and designing reports  Same solution and technology for developers, customer service and customers  Easy deployment to customers and good integration into PowerBuilder applications  Integration with source code control system  Less problems with "not intended by design“ Motivation | Developer View

12. Motivation | Missing or incorrect functionality  truncated text and elements with DataWindow Reports

13. Motivation | Missing or incorrect functionality  truncated text and elements with DataWindow Reports

14. Motivation | Missing or incorrect functionality  truncated text and elements with DataWindow Reports

15. Motivation | Missing or incorrect functionality  Wrong preview/scroll in preview mode and no WYSIWYG

16. Motivation | Missing or incorrect functionality  „Keep together“ of elements  „page breaks“ only with „New Page on Group Break“  Better support for Crosstabs and Pivots (Matrices) in reports  Tables with cumulative informations for each group at the end of a report  More presentation styles and supported images formats  Formated text inside reports (e.g RTF or HTML Columns)  Saveas „PDF“ without Ghostscript  Export to Excel or Word

17. Motivation | History 1996InfoMaker is used by customers to create reports Reporting by developers with DataWindow Reports and Powerbuilder only 2004Various reporting tools were considered to improve reporting List&Label, ActiveReports, DynamicReports, Telerik Reporting, Crystal Reports, Word/Excel 2005Crystal Reports and Infomaker are used for integrated reporting 2007Acquisition of Business Objects by SAP Business Objects was the owner of Crystal Reports 2008Crystal Reports (CR) is no longer active "touted" from S&F Desupport of the Crystal Report ActiveX SDK (Report Designer Component) by SAP, performance problems, rising costs for Crystal Reports, lack of functionality 2010Microsoft provides Visual Studio without Crystal Reports other products have discontinued the use of Crystal Reports, RDL/RDLC is pushed by Microsoft for reporting and business intelligence 2013RDL and Infomaker for integrated reporting customers are using Microsoft ReportBuilder to create reports. Reporting by developers is also done with Microsoft ReportBuilder or Microsoft VisualStudio

18. What is Report Definition Language (RDL)  Report Definition Language (RDL) is a standard proposed by Microsoft for defining reports.  RDL is a XML schema for report definitions. A report definition contains data retrieval and layout information for a report. RDL is composed of XML elements that match an XML grammar created for Reporting Services.  An extensible and open schema that supports additional namespaces and custom elements. You can add your own custom functions for controlling report item values, styles, and formatting by accessing code assemblies within report definition files.  An interchange format for businesses and third parties. RDL promotes the interoperability of commercial reporting products by defining a common schema that enables the interchange of report definitions. Any protocol or programmatic interface that works with XML can be used with RDL.

19. What is Report Definition Language (RDL) There are three high-level sections in a typical RDL file  Page style The objects to display including fields, images, graphs, tables.  Field definitions The extended attributes of fields which are populated with formulas, dynamic data, or database derived data.  Parameters and database connections Parameters that may be furnished by the user or passed in from another application; and database connections and queries for pulling data into the report.

20. What is Report Definition Language (RDL)

21. RDL and SQL Server Reporting Services | remote mode  RDL can be used in local mode without Microsoft SQL Server as an independent and low budget reporting solution with many different datasources (like Oracle, ODBC and OLE DB)  RDL can also be used in remote mode with Microsoft SQL-Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Advantage for SQL Server Reporting  Web Based Reporting Server  Publishing and scheduling is a part of Reporting Services  User login an permissions are built in  Subscriptions are a built in feature

22. RDL Tools | Microsoft  Microsoft Report Builder User Interface like Word/Excel; a tool for non-technical and semi-technical users  Microsoft Visual Studio (isolated Shell) SQL Server Data Tools - Business Intelligence; a tool for semi-technical and technical users  Microsoft Visual Studio (integrated Shell) SQL Server Data Tools - Business Intelligence; a tool for technical users

23. RDL Tools | open source MajorSilence Reporting / My-FyiReporting  a Free Open Source reporting solution for SQL data (most databases),  A report designer allows you to generate reports and save them in.RDL format, and  a report viewer can be called or embedded into your own application.The winform viewer also works in linux using mono. An experimental Gtk/WPF/Cocoa viewer also exists. Vippe Tool – Free RDL Reporting  Vippe is a powerful report and charting system based on Report Definition Language (RDL). Tabular, Free form, Matrix, Charts are fully supported.  Vippe is developed using Open Source Project developed by fyi Reporting Software, http://www.fyireporting.com/http://www.fyireporting.com/

24. Advantages of RDL | technical view  Elimination of existing DataWindow issues  Used to create various types of interactive or predefined reports.  Sorting and expand/collapse button (treeview)  Hyperlinks and Drilldown  Bookmarks and Document Maps  Business Intelligence Reports are possible Access to nearly any data source; Dashboard / Cockpit representations  Stronger separation of data and layout  multiple data sources and datasets simultaneously in one report  central use of „shared“ data sources and datasets for various reports  Optional Reportserver/Reporting Service with SOAP Interface  Server-based report generation by “SQL Server Reporting Services”  central repository for reports  RDL Converter for Crystal Report and Access to RDL but also RDL to Telerik reports for example

25. Advantages of RDL | in general  RDL is an „open“ solution proposed standard from Microsoft for reports  RDL is the reporting solution used by Microsoft itself integrated in Visual Studio and SQL Server, used in Microsoft Dynamics NAV or Microsoft Dynamics CRM  Multiplatform capability Microsoft Windows, Mobile Devices (e.g. iPAD), Web Browser (e.g. Internet Explorer)  Option to extend RDL in different ways e.g. using embedded code and assemblies  Visual Studio developers find their way quickly  Large community and good support  Simple and inexpensive solution