Articles

FastReport VCL is a report generation tool that has become an essential part of developers' arsenal on the Delphi platform over more than a quarter of a century. Since its inception in the late 1990s, the product has evolved from a simple template designer into a comprehensive system that supports interactive elements, vector graphics, and integration with modern IDEs. We decided to take a look back to demonstrate how reporting technologies have changed and to trace the key stages of the product's development in each version.

In today's world, working with data is an integral part of many professions. Microsoft Excel is one of the most popular tools for processing and analyzing it. Formulas in Excel allow you to automate calculations, simplify data analysis, and make reports more informative. However, when exporting data to Excel, it was not always possible to immediately use all the features of formulas.

When developing reporting systems, it is important to be able not only to collect data and create graphs, but also to correctly format the results in different formats. Many users create documents in Microsoft Word (OOXML), where they actively use images: logos, charts, illustrations.

The FastReport .NET designer is an excellent tool for creating report templates. Various databases and file types can be used as data sources. By default, the standard designer includes data sources from: XML, CSV, JSON, MS Access, OLE DB, ODBC, and MS SQL. Also, in the report designer, you can connect to Postgres, MySQL, Firebird, MongoDB, Oracle, SQLite, Couchbase, RavenDB, Excel, and ClickHouse through separate plugins.

In the world of modern software development, creating high-quality and informative reports plays a key role in ensuring effective data analysis and informed decision-making. One of the key aspects of the FastReport .NET is the export of reports to various image formats such as JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF and EMF.

Recently, we launched the FastReport Cloud service, which allows you to create, store, and export reports directly from the cloud storage. In this article, we will look at an example of exporting a report to PDF using FastReport Cloud.

When creating reporting systems, it's important to ensure that reporting tools are compatible with various databases. FastReport .NET is one of the most sought-after libraries for generating reports in .NET applications. In this article, we will go through the process of building and connecting the Firebird plugin in FastReport .NET through the report designer and via code.

We have already reviewed the differences between Publisher, Corporate Server, and Cloud in the previous article. In this material, we will discuss the reasons for replacing Publisher with the Corporate Server along with a migration plan.