Hi All
Has anyone out there generated a PDF file using ASP on the server with SQL data? With so many third-party products, it's hard to know which one is best. Any feedback for processes or products would be great.

What exactly are you looking to do? What version of PDF are you looking to accomodate?

Yehuda

We currently generate management reports in HTML code and display them in the browser from our intranet. We'd like to generate PDF documents to email to the user as well. The data is pulled from SQL databases using ADO and VBSCript. The output is what looks like a management report displayed in HTML in the browser. It will have headings, bolding, underlining, company logo image, page numbers, etc.

We were looking at ActivePDF, but it is pricey. We were also looking at ABCPDF at http://www.websupergoo.com/abcpdf-1.htm. This looks promising. Have you used any PDF generating utilities b4?

It should accommodate the latest version of PDF.
:)

We use activePDF and seems to work well. You might look on http://www.planetpdf.com for more tools. Also the forums on pdfzone.com is filled with very knowledgeable programmers who may have more suggestions.

Yehuda

Thank you. We have looked at PlanetPdf and the products range from free to costly. It's hard to choose. I have also looked at pdfzone.com, but will try again.

Thanks for the info.
:)

Try the forums on both websites ask the programmers what they use.

Yehuda

I use Crystal Reports 9.0. The RDC, Report Designer Component, allows me to create the report in Crystal, formatted the way I like, and allow my ASP page to call the report and pass certain criteria to it then generate an identical PDF on the fly. Internal users can also run the report normally without ASP. It's pretty quick as well.

The problem with displaying the reports in HTML are that the user can modify them.

Suppose you have a contract that you would like your user to print out from your site, sign it, and send it back. With HTML the user could virtually modify the conditions of the contract and it may go undetected from your internal staff. That is until you're made aware of it during a law suit or something.

Even if you disable right-clicking on an HTML report and display it in a popup window with no toolbar, all the user would have to do to get the source is hit Ctrl-N to open it in a new window normally.

Hi!

I am also looking for PDF convertor (component) for my ASP Application, which creates PDF docs for the HTML output.

Regarding ActivePDF, is it true that the Server Version should be installed for 'ActivePDF Webgrabber' to work.

Please Reply.

The best you could use is pdflib.dll this is not free though. Email me if you need an alternative solution