Report Writer is an advanced reporting solution for .NET Framework 2.0 - 4.0 designed to create industry standard PDF and XPS documents dynamically with API calls or from XML. It provides a variety of methods to format text, insert images, draw geometric figures and paths and allows to create complex layouts.

A. Yes, Report Writer has 100% royalty free distribution rights. Pay once and use the product wherever you want including web servers or your distribution packages.

A. The Binaries License includes unlimited number of company's developer seats, unlimited number of company's web servers and unlimited number of distributions as a part of your application.

A. The Source Code License covers the standard Binaries License and includes full source code for the Report Writer. You may perform any modifications to the product or even compile it in one binary file with your application. Please read the software license agreement for more details.

A. No, it's fully functional and represents all original features and behavior. It allows you to perform any tests in your production environment until you get the commercial version of the product.

A. Adobe PDF is an open standard and we haven't seen anything that prevents to develop a product for the PDF document generation. Report Writer doesn't use Acrobat Reader's interfaces to produce PDF documents and is not a plug-in to the Acrobat Reader in any way. From that point of view the product is a standalone third party component. Thus, we believe that you have to follow the Acrobat Reader's license agreement in the matter of distributing the Acrobat Reader itself and the Report Writer's license agreement in the matter of distributing the product.

You may need to get a license from Adobe to bundle the Acrobat Reader with your project distribution package. However, this has nothing to do with the product's API used to generate PDF files.

A. To the best of our knowledge, Microsoft doesn't forbid third party companies to develop a product for the XPS document generation. However, according to the XML Paper Specification Patent License we have to provide the following notice for your information:

This product may incorporate intellectual property owned by Microsoft Corporation. The terms and conditions upon which Microsoft is licensing such intellectual property may be found at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=52369.

A. Report Writer doesn't require any installation. All you need to do is to copy Siberix.ReportWriter.dll into your project folder (desktop applications) or to the "bin" folder (ASPX applications) and reference it from the project. You may read regarding the "bin" folder and other deployment options in ASP.NET at the following link.

Note

In some rare cases you may find out that the evaluation watermark is still in place or get unexpected errors while installing or upgrading the product. To eliminate them please follow to the instructions below. It is preferred to perform all the steps together:

• Check you have the latest Siberix.ReportWriter.dll
• Remove all inclusions of Siberix.ReportWriter.dll at the temporary ASP.NET directory (%WINDOWS%\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\Temporary ASP.NET Files\root)
• Open your project and remove all references to Siberix.ReportWriter.dll in your project including the main reference path (Right click on the project name in the Solution Explorer / Properties / References Path)
• Save the project
• Add references to Siberix.ReportWriter.dll in your project
• Save and recompile the project
• Clear your browser's cache
• Restart the Internet Informational Server (IIS)
• Run the project

A. There are several ways to stream out PDF or XPS documents from an ASPX page. See the code samples below.

Content types:

PDF - application/pdf
XPS - application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument

1. Streaming into the context's response

[c#]

System.Web.HttpContext context = System.Web.HttpContext.Current;
System.Web.HttpResponse response = context.Response;
response.Clear();
response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
report.Publish(response.OutputStream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF);
response.End();

[vb]

Dim context As System.Web.HttpContext = System.Web.HttpContext.Current
Dim response As System.Web.HttpResponse = context.Response
response.Clear()
response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
report.Publish(response.OutputStream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF)
response.End()

Note: To stream out a PDF document over the https response please use the following lines:

[c#]

System.IO.MemoryStream ms = new System.IO.MemoryStream();

report.Publish(ms, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF);

byte[] buffer = ms.ToArray();
int length = buffer.Length;

System.Web.HttpContext context = System.Web.HttpContext.Current;
System.Web.HttpResponse response = context.Response;
response.Clear();
response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
response.AddHeader("Content-Length", length.ToString());
response.AddHeader("Accept-Ranges", "bytes");
response.AddHeader("Accept-Header", length.ToString());
response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, length);
response.End();

[vb]

Dim ms As System.IO.MemoryStream = New System.IO.MemoryStream()

report.Publish(ms, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF)

Dim buffer As Byte() = ms.ToArray()
Dim length As Integer = buffer.Length

Dim context As System.Web.HttpContext = System.Web.HttpContext.Current
Dim response As System.Web.HttpResponse = context.Response
response.Clear()
response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
response.AddHeader("Content-Length", length.ToString())
response.AddHeader("Accept-Ranges", "bytes")
response.AddHeader("Accept-Header", length.ToString())
response.OutputStream.Write(buffer, 0, length)
response.End()

2. Streaming into the "Response" with the "inline" attribute

[c#]

Response.Clear();
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "inline; filename=Document.pdf");
report.Publish(Response.OutputStream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF);
Response.End();

[vb]

Response.Clear()
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "inline; filename=Document.pdf")
report.Publish(Response.OutputStream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF)
Response.End()

3. Streaming into the "Response" with the "attachment" attribute

[c#]

Response.Clear();
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf";
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=Document.pdf");
report.Publish(Response.OutputStream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF);
Response.End();

[vb]

Response.Clear()
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"
Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=Document.pdf")
report.Publish(Response.OutputStream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF)
Response.End()

4. Saving to the server and redirecting to some HTML page with the link to the generated PDF document

[c#]

System.IO.FileStream stream = new System.IO.FileStream(Server.MapPath("Document.pdf"), System.IO.FileMode.Create, System.IO.FileAccess.Write);
report.Publish(stream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF);
stream.Close();

Response.Redirect("link.html");
or
Response.Clear();
Response.Output.Write("<a href=\"Document.pdf\">PDF</a>");
Response.End();

[vb]

Dim stream As System.IO.FileStream = New System.IO.FileStream(Server.MapPath("Document.pdf"), System.IO.FileMode.Create, System.IO.FileAccess.Write)
report.Publish(stream, Siberix.Report.FileFormat.PDF)
stream.Close()

Response.Redirect("link.html")
or
Response.Clear()
Response.Output.Write("<a href=""Document.pdf"">PDF</a>")
Response.End()

A. You can use the <EMBED> tag to embed PDF files within your HTML pages:

<EMBED src="Document.pdf" width="500" height="500"></EMBED>

For Netscape Navigator users also add the "href" attribute:

<EMBED src="Document.pdf" href="Document.pdf" width="500" height="500"></EMBED>

A. You may use the "attachment" attribute. This will open PDF document in a separate window:

Response.AddHeader("content-disposition", "attachment; filename=Document.pdf");

Another way is to use the last part of the URL as a name for the document:

http://www.myServer.com/pdf.aspx?filename=/Document.pdf

A. You may pass a page number in the "page" parameter. See the line below:

http://www.myServer.com/myFolder/myDocument.pdf#page=5

A. You may simply run Acrobat Reader and open some PDF document in it with the following lines:

using System.Diagnostics;

Process process = new Process();
ProcessStartInfo info = new ProcessStartInfo("Document.pdf");
process.StartInfo = info;
process.Start();

A. You may set permissions using the following steps:

1. Select the folder
2. Select "Properties" (Right click)
3. Select "Security" tab
4. Select "Add"
5. Select "Advanced"
6. Click "Find Now"
7. Select "ASPNET" account and add it to the list
8. Set the required permissions for that account

A. You may use the following command line:

cscript C:\Inetpub\AdminScripts\adsutil.vbs set W3SVC/{siteID}/Root/{subfolder}{page.asp}/DoDynamicCompression False