Report Generation and HTML

[Terry_S]

I am using the report generation toolkit in an application and currently I am creating MSWord reports.  However I have clients that may not have MSWord and I have been looking at the HTML choice.

I created this application around 15 years ago and have clients using around the world, but I have issues with the reporting and using Office (the original build is using calls to macros in EXCEL to generate a final report of the data that is sent to EXCEL).  The problem with this is everytime there is a new version of Office or based on a Company's policy regarding VBA macros, the application will break.  So I am looking for other options that would have a longer life.

My application is reporting charts and pictures from each step of an experiment and the data is stored in a database.  The number of steps are not a fixed number, so what I have done is created a cluster that contains the chart and it's associated picture.  So what I do is query each data set in the data base and I then use the Append Control Image vi to add the series of steps to the report.

I like the idea of creating a HTML report ( I have tried it a it works), but I don't like the fact that this will create a number of images files that are linked to the report.  Has anybody used some other options for reports with success?  I don't want a list of options that you think might work and I should give it a try.

Regards

[playerm1]

I've used gnuplot to create simple reports on NI-Linux based cRIOs before.

http://www.gnuplot.info/

There are Windows binaries available. It's definitely not user friendly, but I bet it will suffer from fewer long-term compatibility issues compared to the MS Office based solution.