[xsl] XSL-based report engines?

Subject: [xsl] XSL-based report engines?
From: "Ross Lambert" <ross@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2002 11:09:19 -0800
Fellow XSL'ers,

I'm a near-newbie and don't know if this is the right approach or not, but
here goes...

I implemented a rather simple web-based XSL reporting system for my company.
It works great, unfortunately now they want more. :-) They would like to
allow customer service reps and eventually end users to be able to design
their own reports. In the past, only the software development team could do
this (and it was all hardcoded in servlets, had to go through the formal QA
process, and had to wait until formal releases to push the new code...
yuk!).

My system is much faster and more flexible, but it still is not end-user
friendly. I can deploy a new report in a couple hours, but I'm happy to type
XSL code and write SQL.

Q1: Are there any commercial report designers out there that emit XSL? If
so, would that be the way to go? We might be able to afford to license
something that we embed within our product.

Q2: Another option is to let the end-users customize several existing
templates (double-click a placeholder graphic to upload their own, etc.).
I'd still probably have to write an SQL generator, though. Is this the
lesser of two evils?

All advice welcome. Thanks in advance.

== Ross ==

Ross W. Lambert, Senior Software Engineer
Who's Calling, Inc.
www.whoscalling.com





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