About GAIN THEORY
Gain Theory fuses data, analytics, technology solutions, and consumer insight capabilities to give marketing and insight professionals the confidence to make smarter, faster business decisions.
The Report Canvas Component is one of the leading products which allows the user to create visual reports based on a pre-loaded dataset. The user can add different components to their canvas including pictures, text boxes, charts, and tables, they then specify the data and how it should be aggregated. The user can then rearrange and resize the objects to fit their page. The user can specify color palettes and save off templates for future use. Aspose.Cells for .NET was used to export all the objects on the canvas to Excel with the correct data. The component was initially written with VB.Net in Visual Studio 2008.
Requirements Scenario
We selected Aspose.Cells because of its almost complete Excel export capabilities. Most importantly for us was its ability to export charts and tables especially in Microsoft Excel 2007 – which were lacking in other 3rd party components.
Solution Implementation
Each object on the report canvas has a function that takes an instance of the Aspose.Cells for .NET worksheet and adds itself to the worksheet. When the user requests an export the workbook and worksheets are initialized and each object on the report canvas has this function called.
Benefits
Aspose.Cells for .NET allowed us to build up the Excel workbook entirely independently of Excel and then save the workbook in the format selected by the user. This saved hours of debugging the interaction when using the Excel interop and implementing different routines for saving to varying versions of Excel.
Future Implementations
We are likely to use Aspose.Cells for. NET for all loading and saving of Excel files. This will include loading data templates and exporting results.
Conclusion
As yet, we have had no problems using the Aspose.Cells for .NET components and the component has saved us development time in both the short and long-term. Support and Sales queries have been answered swiftly and helpfully. The user produces their canvas, selecting the Export button to save the canvas to Excel using Aspose.Cells for .NET.
Robert Chilvers
Report Canvas Component
www.gaintheory.com/
