Forum Discussion

angela's avatar
angela
Catalyst II
7 years ago

What happened to the Report Designer of the XSLT Report Tool?

Hi,

I found this historic document from 2007 describing how to use the XSLT Report Tool in Aras Innovator 8.1.

https://www.aras.com/support/documentation/8.1.1/Other%20Documents/Aras%20Innovator%208.1%20-%20XSLT%20Report%20Tool%20Users%20Guide.pdf

I really like the document! It's like a journey through time. Back to a time when software was all designed in the same standard gray color. 

And I also made an interesting discovery. In the past, the report buider included some kind of report designer for the Stylesheet!

Does anybody know what happended to the Report Designer? It´s was available till Aras Innovator 9.3, but suddenly disappeard in version 9.4 (2013) and never was seen again. 

Is it still available somewhere in Aras?

Best regards!

Angela

XSLT Reports

3 Replies

  • eli_donahue's avatar
    eli_donahue
    Community Manager
    7 years ago

    Hi Angela,

    I haven't seen the report designer in my years at Aras, so I think this tool was probably discontinued for a reason. Maybe a compatibility issue as Aras adopted more modern technologies? 

    Either way, this use case could be an interesting community project.

    Eli

    Eli Donahue

    Aras Labs Lead Engineer

  • angela's avatar
    angela
    Catalyst II
    7 years ago

    Hi Eli,

    I have heard, that Visual Studio offers a similar design option. So it´s maybe possible to use Visual Studio for designing reports and than just copy&paste the result to Aras. If this is true, it´s understandable why Aras removed the report designer, as there are maybe more powerful options avaiable that are more long time stable and easier to maintain.

    I am familiar with the reports designer we can use for SSRS reports. But so far I mainly used it in combintation with content from SQL queries, not with content from XML/AML queries. 

    Are you familiar with this kind of option? Using Visual Studio for XSLT reports would be an exellent topic for a blog article. 

    • eli_donahue's avatar
      eli_donahue
      Community Manager
      7 years ago

      Hi Angela, 

      Do you have any links to the XSLT report designer feature for Visual Studio? I think the only report designer feature I've seen is the one for SSRS. It's been so long since I've used it, I can't remember if that generates XSLT.

      Thanks!

      Eli Donahue

      Aras Labs Lead Engineer