List & Label 13

asp:review

List & Label 13

Attain New Heights in .NET Reporting

By Anand Narayanaswamy

Reporting is one of the essential parts in the softwareand Web development lifecycle. Imagine you are building a Web-based applicationfor a big retail chain. End users should not only be able to view the reportsonline in different formats, but they also should be able to print them. Forthis purpose, there is a demand for a powerful product that can perform all thesetasks quickly. When I reviewed combit s List& Label 12, it had a limited set of features. With the passage of time,the vendor has listened to the demands of their customers and released a brandnew edition of the product.

As usual, a trial edition is available for download fromthe vendor s Web site (http://www.combit.net/en/page1127.aspx).However, to take advantage of all the features, you must purchase their fullversion, which comes with a CD and a handy reference guide. I installed theproduct without any problems on a machine with Windows XP SP2.

A core feature of List & Label 13 is that it includesa completely new rendering engine for charts, as well as support for LINQ. Thedesigner can be activated with a single line of code, and the property dialogfor charts has been rebuilt from scratch. A notable feature of the product isthat you can simultaneously print reports while previewing results (see Figure1).

Figure 1: Printing reports whilepreviewing.

Moreover, you also can preview reports in slideshow mode,similar to PowerPoint presentations. The product enables you to design reportswith multiple column tables; for this purpose you can set the column typedirectly from the designer (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Designing reports withmultiple column tables.

I feel this feature will help you to build great-looking reportswith space-saving layouts. A notable feature of List & Label 13 is itsability to export reports in a variety of formats, such as Unicode, XML paperspecification (XPS), Pictures, and as ZIP archives, which I hope will savevaluable space while exporting a large report from the Web. Be forewarned,though, that the XPS format will work only under .NET Framework 3.0 and higher.

This new edition also enables you to create various kindsof charts in different formats. For instance, a pie chart can be viewed in anexploded view (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Exploded view of pie chartin action.

combit also has enhanced the look and feel of bar charts.You also can create cone diagrams, octahedron diagrams, and horizontal barcharts. In addition, combit has introduced in List & Label 13 two newbarcodes, ISBN and QR code for 2D. The generated barcodes can be read by the latestmobile phones, which, from my point of view, will surely enhance the quality ofreporting. The Enterprise Edition of the product also includes an advancedformula editor, which is a big bonus for developers. Furthermore, the product iscompatible with all major databases and programming languages, including therecently released ASP.NET 3.5.

combit has posted a complete list of all the features,along with relevant PDF files, at http://www.combit.net/en/reporting_tool/page1123.aspx.Moreover, you can download from http://www.combit.net/en/page1425.aspxvideo presentations anchored by the List & Label project manager. Besides theEnterprise Edition, the product is available in Standard and Professional versions(which offer fewer features).

You can access all the sample demos, documentation,various tools, and related links, from the Start Center, which is located on theStart menu. This should help developers find any and all information at aglance, in a user-friendly way. However, to reduce the learning curve forbeginners it would be better if combit provided a step-by-step guide to developinga simple reporting application.

I found that the product contains samples meant forversions prior to Visual Studio 2005. I feel this will not be useful for thosedevelopers who use Visual Studio 2005 and 2008. Moreover, the user interfacesof some of the sample demos are provided in German. It would be better if thesamples are provided in both English and German.

combit provides excellent support through e-mail. Althoughthe vendor hosts public newsgroups at http://www.combit.net/en/page1075.aspx,I would suggest they launch a user-friendly discussion forum on the site socustomers can interact more easily with the product teams.

Even though the product mainly targets advanceddevelopers, beginners also can benefit by learning how to use it at a slow pacewith the help of the available resources. I m sure .NET reporting will achievenew heights if List & Label 13 is put to use in an efficient manner.

Anand Narayanaswamy,a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), works as an independentconsultant based in Trivandrum, India.Anand also works as chief technical editor for http://ASPAlliance.com.He is the author of Community Server Quicklypublished by Packt Publishing (http://www.packtpub.com/community-server/book).He runs http://Learnxpress.com, http://Dotnetalbum.com, http://Csharpfaq.com, http://www.computerbookreviews.org,and http://www.devreviews.com. Find out more about Anand at http://www.visualanand.net or e-mail himat mailto:[email protected].

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Web Site: http://www.combit.net/en/

Price: US$2,533.52