Reporting and Mail Merge have become wide-sweeping terms for automated document, report and label creation. Creating invoices, proposals, generated covering letters or shipping labels was never that easy - simply using word processing skills. This chapter shows how to use the DocumentServer.MailMerge class to merge ApplicationFields in template documents with data from various data sources. The MailMerge class encapsulates powerful mail merge capabilities of TX Text Control .NET in a ready-to-use component. MailMerge is part of the TXTextControl.DocumentServer namespace and can be used in Windows Forms, WPF and ASP.NET in all available editions.
Instead of utilizing complex reporting tools and designers to create business documents, TX Text Control offers an easy-to-use and powerful way to create reports in your .NET based applications.
The DocumentServer.MailMerge class is a .NET component that can be used to merge template documents with database content effortlessly in .NET projects such as Windows Forms or WPF client applications, ASP.NET Web applications, Web services or Windows services. Internally, TX Text Control is used which must be connected to the MailMerge component. The MailMerge component can be connected with the classes TextControl and ServerTextControl.
Using the DocumentServer.MailMerge component, template documents containing MS Word merge fields can be easily loaded, merged with a DataSet or DataTable of the Microsoft .NET System.Data namespace or all kind of business objects and enumerable classes and exported to supported file format types of TX Text Control such as Adobe PDF or DOCX.
Instead of utilizing complex reporting tools and designers to create business documents, TX Text Control offers an easy-to-use and powerful way to create reports in your Windows Forms, WPF or ASP.NET applications. Text Control Reporting combines the power of a reporting tool and an easy-to-use word processor - fully programmable and embeddable in your application.
With Text Control Reporting, your users create templates with typical word processing features such as page columns, tables, images and headers and footers. In contrast to complex report designers, users can use their MS Word skills to create beautiful reports - no steep learning curve.
Powerful data visualization in a report or any other documents is essential to get the "big picture". Charts indicate trends and can be used to attractively visualize large volumes of data.
Bars, donuts, pies or financial series - more than 30 fully programmable diagram types can be added. This concept allows you to create true WYSIWYG templates for your reports. The size and style of charts are added at design-time and merged dynamically.
Text Control Reporting implements an out-of-the-box data connection wizard to connect to all types of databases including MS SQL, Access, ADO.NET or ODBC. You can easily insert Merge Fields and Merge Blocks from recognized database tables.
When merging the created templates in your own .NET application, you simply need to pass the filled DataSet, DataTable or your business objects.
Creating powerful hierarchical reports is the strength of TX Text Control. Nested repeating blocks with master-detail relationship views can be easily inserted. It doesn't matter what's repeated in the block: A table row, paragraphs, images or text frames.
Typically, these hierarchical views are used in invoices, inventory lists and all kinds of complex textual lists and reports.
1D and 2D barcodes make the reporting solution complete. TX Text Control can be easily used to create invoices, sales sheets and delivery notes with industry standard barcodes to connect the digital world and the paper-oriented world.
Text Control Reporting supports all typical industry standard 1D and 2D barcode types such as QRCode, DataMatrix, MaxiCode, EAN or IntelligentMail.
Text Control Reporting supports the most important industry standard document formats such as DOC, DOCX, RTF, HTML, PDF and PDF/A. You can digitally sign and encrypt Adobe PDF and PDF/A documents or print them directly from your application.
