Developers are always on a look out for powerful products for
producing documents over the web and users were keenly waiting to
explore and use them. Prior to .NET, developers faced lot of
difficulties for the creation of documents and reports over the web.
There were no concrete products for producing them based on User
Input. Visual Basic 6.0 came with a reporting tool called DataReport
but it can’t be used for web-based environments. Active Server Pages
combined with HTML provided some functionality, but still users
faced difficulties for saving the generated output on their systems.
With the evolution of .NET, the whole scenario has completely
changed. Visual Studio .NET ships with a reporting tool called
Crystal Reports, but it lacks major features like auto generation of
reports in Microsoft Word.
These difficulties are completely eliminated with the introduction
of WordWriter by SoftArtisans. Headquartered in Boston, MA, USA,
SoftArtisans had already developed lot of powerful products or
components for .NET and Java and I must say that WordWriter 1.0 is
an another feather in their cap. The product comes in two versions -
Java and .NET. This review focuses on the .NET version of
WordWriter.
WordWriter is a high performance .NET assembly which opens, modifies
and delivers native Microsoft Word documents over the Web. The
product uses data from an existing Word file or template. In
addition to this, WordWriter requires a data source. The data source
can be an array or a database. An interesting factor which I noticed
is that it uses few lines of code to generate editable,
presentation-quality documents. Moreover, you can save the document
instantly and the product preserves all the features associated with
Word documents like formatting, styles, graphics and VBAs. It is
also easy to use a database as a data source because WordWriter uses
one-step database integration. You can access the WordWriter’s
Development Guide at http://officewriter.softartisans.com/default.aspx?PageID=196
A key feature of this product is that the output is generated on the
server and Microsoft Word is not required on the Web server to view
the generated output. Hence, the product will have licensing
flexibility and you can deploy your applications without worries.
WordWriter also supports multilingual environments and hence you can
deploy the applications seamlessly without any concerns about the
language settings. The vendor claims that the familiarity of
Microsoft Word and the interconnectivity of the web enable
WordWriter to make a dramatic impact on the distribution of
information across an enterprise.
It also tightly integrates with WebForm controls and the product is
built upon a simple and intuitive object model. Hence, you can use
WordWriter to create and distribute customized reports. The
generated Word file can be saved to your hard disk. You can also
open it with your browser. But I noticed that the product supports
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and above or Netscape Navigator 4.5
or later. I don’t think the browser issue will be a big problem
since most of the users are now using IE 5.0 or higher versions. The
server should be running under Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows
2003 with the .NET Framework and J# redistributable packages.
The client system should have any latest versions of Microsoft Word.
The client can also use Microsoft Word Viewer, but it is not
possible to modify the output generated by the WordWriter with the
viewer. WordWriter can also be used with Classic ASP. You will get
more information regarding this from the documentation which comes
with the product. The vendor’s web site contains a separate section
called Tips and Tricks and it can be accessed at
http://support.softartisans.com/kbview.aspx?show=tips
I didn’t experience any difficulty with the installation and to work
with this product. I tested the product with Notepad, but you can
also use Visual Studio .NET. If you use Notepad, you have to copy
the WordWriter.DLL from the installation directory to the bin folder
inside Inetpub/wwwroot directory. If the Bin directory doesn’t exist
you can create it. If you use Visual Studio .NET, you have to add a
reference of this DLL to your project. If you are using this product
for the first time, I recommend reusing the sample program which
came with the product. Before making any modifications to the ASPX
file, you have to create a template using Microsoft Word. It can be
done by merging fields via Insert | Field menu. I suggest reading
the quick-start tutorial first since it explains this process in
detail.
The product comes in an evaluation version with a 30-day license.
The vendor claims that the product expires on the last day of each
month. I think they have created a good algorithm to enable the
trial functionality. In order to download the product you have to
give your email address. The vendor immediately sends you an e-mail
containing the download instructions. One of the most disappointing
factors with this product is that the size of download file is very
huge. It comes around 18 MB and the WordWriter is shipped with
ExcelWriter also.
I wonder why the vendor didn’t provided separate installation
downloads for both these products. If they had provided like that
then the users without broadband connectivity could easily download
the product and in less time. It took around one hour for me to
download the product with a broadband net connection. I strongly
suggest you to install Download Accelerator before downloading this
product since it will marginally reduce the download time. The
product worked very well with Microsoft Word 2003.
The product ships with a good piece of documentation. It is divided
into several sections like Features in Depth, Samples etc. I liked
the samples section since it provides several demonstrations in both
Visual Basic .NET and C#. Moreover, the execution steps are clearly
detailed in boxes. The documentation includes a quick-start tutorial
which explains how to work with the product along with the relevant
screenshots.
It also comes with a programmer’s reference and other tidbits. Also
it is in HTML Help Format – a version which I like the most. I
noticed while testing the product that all sample programs are
nicely organized in folders and are well commented with short
descriptions as well. This will surely help developers a lot. You
can also directly open the installation folder from the start menu.
You can know more details about the product from its home page at
http://officewriter.softartisans.com/default.aspx?PageID=189
Standard Edition: $1495.00 Special Price: $895.00
(For 1-2 CPUs)
About the Author
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Anand
Narayanaswamy, a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Visual C#
is an independent writer, web developer and technical consultant based in Trivandrum,
India. Anand is the webmaster of
learnXpress.com and specializes in ASP, ASP.NET, C#, Visual Basic
.NET and Visual Basic 6.0 and in the development of courseware,
technical articles, documentation, and reviews of products and
books. He is available for consultation and can be reached by
passing a message through
http://www.learnxpress.com/modules/contents/help/econtact.aspx
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