Question creating reports

[Rishi]

I am looking for advise on a new development application we are starting.
I have to write 6 programs to create 6 different reports in text and excel formats (CSV). The related GUI application will launch either Notepad or Excel to view the reports.
One of the reports will be an Excel spreadsheet with calculations, many of them have subtotals. Reading data from SQL Server db tables, and also need to read a text file for additional data. The report files will be saved to a server folder. Programs also need to do an FTP of a file to a server.

The GUI appl. Will be written in Visual Basic .NET
I am not sure whether to write the report programs in .NET or Java, I have not written reports in either language before, so need to figure it out either way.

These programs will be executed from a .bat file passing parameters to the program, run by a Windows scheduled task.

Any pros/cons you can provide for whether to use VB.NET or Java ?
Guidance on how I would roll this out (create .exe files in both cases ?)

 

[Tom]

I would create it in a console app in VB.net if it is going to be run on a task scheduler and doesnt need user events. Also I would suggest creating typed datasets that match your report fields, fill the datasets with data from the database and then pass the filled datasets to each of your reports as its source.

Writing to Excel can be done one of two ways, you can use odbc functionality to export the dataset right to the file without the need or intervention of automating Excel. This is definitely easiest but since your not automating excel, you lose some formatting options, resizing the columns, bolding fonts, must adhere to table structure etc... Fully automating Excel gives more control but needs to be customized for each of your reports and also needs to be updated whenever there are any changes to your data structure.

I would suggest looking into crystal reports, again you can design the reports based on your dataset and passed the filled dataset to it as your source. You can then export the results as a pdf file.

Bahhh to java