Even with all the advancements in technology, two important factors for enterprise desktop development still hold true today. There remains a need for better performance and an appealing user interface (UI). Today, you've got the opportunity to win a free license of ComponentOne Studio for WinForms controls (valued at $1,195.00) that will help you do just that. (Note: contest is complete and winner awarded)
I was excited when presented with the opportunity to test ComponentOne's collection of .NET Windows Form controls included in the Studio for WinForms suite. What’s great about ComponentOne is that they have been providing some of the most well-known grids for Windows Client apps, FlexGrid and TrueDBGrid, since 1991. With that longevity, you know that their controls will stand the test of time and evolve along with market trends.
The Studio offers over 65 .NET Windows Forms controls, in some instances extending what is “in the box” and in others providing controls you can’t get anywhere else. ComponentOne Studio for WinForms controls include code-free designers, built-in features, like the ability to replicate popular interfaces as seen in Microsoft Office, and awesome flexibility. The Studio comes with controls like Chart, Ribbon, FlexGrid, Scheduler, Reports, and True DBGrid.
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As you read on you’ll see this product earned high remarks and we decided to hold a drawing so that one of our readers would have a chance to win a Free License of ComponentOne Studio for WinForms. Be sure you are logged in as an eggheadcafe.com member and click the entry banner to be automatically entered in the drawing
As a developer, you invest in a third party control suite (or get your employer to do so) for several reasons:
• First, because it provides controls with functionality that you need in order to develop better applications in less time.
• Second, because it can be significantly less expensive to purchase the control suite than to devote the many hours of development time that would be necessary to provide the needed functionality.
• And third, because the professional look and feel of a control suite enhances the usability and performance of your applications. Having reviewed ComponentOne's Studio for WinForms controls, it's my opinion that the suite meets all three criteria
One really strong suit for ComponentOne's Studio for WinForms controls is it's all-in-one reporting solution, which has a rich object model for generating reports, several UI controls for previewing, and a report designer for creating and designing reports. Reports for WinForms is pretty much an all-in-one reporting solution. You can generate professional looking, well-behaved reports for your applications. You can even integrate your existing reporting solutions (SQL Server, Access, Crystal) into your applications.
I used the report designer to create a custom report based on some tables in the trusty Northwind database with no trouble at all. You can drag fields onto your report designer surface and easily design custom reports exactly to your liking. I generated a Grouped-by-Country Sales report from Northwind in a matter of seconds, from a stored procedure. These can then be either printed, or exported to other programs such as Excel, PDF, Html, RTF, Text, and XML Paper Specification:
Here's another custom report I did with a C1 Chart control added. You can see my Bromberg IPA and Ultra Bock are doing well:
The C1Chart control offers a wide range of features and makes it relatively easy to create really stunning color charts of just about any type. Here's one I did using the OpenHighLowClose bar chart style for a stock:
C1Report provides a rich object model for creating, customizing, loading, and saving report definitions. Whether you need to generate reports with barcodes, charts, etc., or render reports directly to a printer or preview control it is possible using C1Report. You can also modify existing SQL Server SSRS reports or even create new reports completely in code using the C1RdlReport component
People often ask about importing, and with ComponentOne’s control you can import Access report files (MDB) and Crystal report files (RPT) using the C1ReportDesigner application. The C1ReportDesigner uses a banded report model for a highly organized and familiar layout. You can create complex hierarchical documents with automatic word index, TOC generation, data binding, and more with C1PrintDocument.
Controls that come with the C1Report features include:
C1Report Component : The C1Report component generates Access-style database reports. C1Report exposes an object model for creating, customizing, loading, and saving report definitions. I experimented mostly with this component. I found it easy to use and easy to customize with a variety of added controls.
C1RdlReport Component : The C1RdlReport component provides support for SQL Server Reporting Services. C1RdlReport exposes the full RDL object model so you can modify existing reports or create new reports without external dependencies such as Microsoft Reporting Services. Import your existing SSRS report definitions (RDL) into C1RdlReport to programmatically generate your reports and integrate them with the full ComponentOne Reporting suite.
C1PrintDocument Component : The C1PrintDocument component provides an object model that allows you to create arbitrarily complex documents in code. The object model specifically targets paginated documents, providing a rich set of features to facilitate automatic and intelligent pagination of complex structured documents. Documents can be completely created in code, or bound to a database via a flexible data binding model.
C1MultiDocument Component : C1MultiDocument is designed to allow creating, persisting and exporting large documents that cannot be handled by a single document object due to memory limitations. Use C1MultiDocument to combine multiple C1PrintDocuments, C1Reports and C1RdlReports which will be rendered as a whole continuous document with shared page numbering, a common TOC, word index, page count and inter-document hyperlinks.
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