[PythonReports-devel] [ pythonreports-Feature Requests-1592008 ] Report Definition Language Specification

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Feature Requests item #1592008, was opened at 2006-11-07 15:51
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Category: Format specifications
Group: None
>Status: Closed
>Resolution: Rejected
Priority: 5
Private: No
Submitted By: Oleg Deribas (older)
Assigned to: Nobody/Anonymous (nobody)
Summary: Report Definition Language Specification

Initial Comment:
As PythonReports use XML for report storage, maybe it
is better to support MS Report Definition Language
Specification instead of inventing its own format?
It would allow some interoperability with other
implementations of this specification.

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>Comment By: alexander smishlajev (a1s)
Date: 2006-11-07 17:31

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glad you asked.  RDL was one of the specs i browsed through
when i was working on PRT specification.

the problem with RDL is that it includes quite a fiew things
that are of no interest to PythonReports.  if you look at
figure 1 of the RDL specifications document you can see that
nearly half of it is dedicated to data activities: fetching,
filtering and sorting your report data set.  i do not need
things like that personally (my application is working on
object-oriented database model), and it is my strong opinion
that such activities lay out of PythonReports scope: it is
easier and much more convenient to prepare report data with
Python code than to learn Yet Another Data Manipulation
Language.  you may also use third party tools to automate
data retrieval if you wish.

besides, i didn't catch on to the visual model of Report
Definition Language.  it seems to be a bit overblown and on
the other hand somewhat difficult to implement primitive
reporting operations like data grouping and totals
calculations.  all in all i wouldn't be able to implement
this specification.

on the other hand, PRT is exactly what has been implemented.
 i did my best to make it easy to comprehend, especially if
you have some experience with existing database reporting
tools, windows- and java-based.  there still remain some
grey areas i'd like to discuss with interested people, but
i'm quite happy with what it is already.

and finally, i believe that you can make PRT from RDL with
more or less straightforward XML transformation.

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Comment By: Oleg Deribas (older)
Date: 2006-11-07 15:53

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Sorry, forgot to mention that Report Definition Language
Specification is freely available at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/reporting/rdlspec.mspx

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