1. FastReport 3 Enterprise - Client/Server reporting tool
The "client-server" technology is based on interaction between a client application (which inquires, analyzes, and displays requested information) and a server application that performs basic work related to various complex calculations. There are several serious advantages of using client-server technology in your applications: - low hardware requirements for client PCs; - reducing of network traffic due to reducing the amount of information transferred between a client's application and a database server; - simplicity of system management of the existing client-server; - higher level of information protection. However, the client-server technology has some considerable disadvantages: - high hardware requirements for a PC used as a server; - certain difficulties in development of client-server applications. When developing FastReport 3 Enterprise, we take into account all major requirements for client-server applications. FastReport 3 Enterprise allows you to: - run any reports on the server side on client request, without necessity to directly connect the client to the database server; - manage several client requests simultaneously in separate threads; it minimizes response time of the server; - since we use HyperText transfer protocol (HTTP, RFC 2068 [2]), you can use different existing applications, such as web-browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Opera etc), proxy-servers, web-servers (Internet Information Server, Apache etc), together with FastReport 3 Enterprise without any additional requirements; - use data compression algorithms (GZip, RFC 1952 [6]). This reduces network traffic and increases client-server processing power; - use of MD5 algorithm for the MIC (Message Integrity Checksum, RFC 1321 [4], RFC 1864 [5]) increases data integrity; - compatibility with FastReport 3 report files (with some restrictions) allows you to easily redesign your application to use client-server technology; - standalone server application (without necessity to apply IIS, Apache or other web-server technologies) has a high processing power, short response time, and economical use of system resources (in comparison with solutions based on CGI technology); - you can use the server as a simple HTTP server for storing and displaying any HTML documents; - application of the Server Side Include (SSI) technology allows you to use the server as an engine for your web-site; - managing the connection logs, error logs, and/or any additional system information allows you to keep record of the work, quickly track down the bugs and unauthorized access attempts; - usage of authentications and "allow/deny" IP lists allows you to restrict access to the server; - you can use several database connections in one report simultaneously; - you can use FastReport client components for interaction between a client application and the server. You can use any web-browser as well; - your reports may have a dialogue forms that will be used for entering some values before running a report; - supported formats of the prepared reports are: HTML, PDF, RTF, XML, XLS, JPEG, and Text; - you can use several modes of displaying the prepared report in your web-browser: single-page document, page-separated with page navigator. |
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