[AccessD] Using Access for Reports w/an ASP app?

Christopher Hawkins clh at christopherhawkins.com
Fri Mar 19 11:02:58 CST 2004


Greetings!

Here's my deal - I have a spectacularly cheap client who brought me
on to fix an Access application that was botched by another
programmer (90% of my business falls into this category.  :P), but
they've decided that Access is at least partly to blame for the
failure of the project (again, I say :P).

So they want me to re-write the front-end in ASP.  No problem there -
most of the problems are in the UI; the schema is surprisingly good,
considering the UI (it's truly poor).

The roadblock I'm encountering is this:  how do I make sure they can
still access their reports?  They have some pretty complex reports in
that Access app, and they won't pay for Crystal.

I was thinking that I'd leave a copy of their Access mdb on the web
server and then write a dll that would open a report, write it ti
pdf, and then return it to the browser.  The only problem is...I have
no idea how to do that.  I also don't know if it's a smart thing to
do.  I also don't knwo if they'll want to pay for the dev time.

Barring the above idea, is anyone aware of a cheap or free web
reporting utility/tool/component that I can use to either leverage
their existing reports, or re-create them for web use without having
to go with something expensive like Crystal?


-Christopher-





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