Generating reports using data feeds from other systems

Dear all,
I've been following this group with interest for a while now but haven't
seen any firm pointers for a solution to meet my problems.
Essentially I would like to be able to
1) Create reports, acknowledgements, delivery notes, invoices, etc using
data supplied from my legacy system Unix.
2) Output them to PDF - some of the parameters of this would be in the data
feed.
3) Email or fax these PDFs to our customers.
It's not possible Reporting Services to query directly our system due to
other limitations, but can we feed RS with data either via uploading a file
to a "watch" directory or via a print spool queue on the windows system - we
already use both methods for other applications.
The reason for a print queue is it's easy to implement from Unix to
Windows - no messing with FTP etc, and print queues already exist in our
application.
The format of the data feed can be XML or indeed anything as we are source
code holders for our product.
The questions are:
1) Is this vaguely possible. ?
2) Can RS take it's feed from a print queue - with possibly us putting
together the software to accept the data on the print queue.
3) Could it handle files dropped into a "watch directory"
4) Can RS create PDFs using parameters in the feed file.
5) Could RS, with perhaps additional development, distribute the PDFs based
on parameters contained with the data feed.
If anyone could shed any light on my thoughts, or perhaps, they've done
something like this already, I would greatly appreciate some feedback.
How about this as a product Microsoft - all those legacy systems out there
suddenly able to print something a little better than the old dot-matrix
print-outs on pre-printed stationary. !!!
Any pointers would be much appreciated.
Kind Rgds
Graham GoodeyThis is possible but you will need to write a custom data extension for both
the data in the report as well as driving the delivery of reports. I think
the file-based approach will be easier than the print queue.
--
Brian Welcker
Group Program Manager
SQL Server Reporting Services
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
"Graham Goodey" <graham_goodey@.yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:O4b500PVEHA.1012@.TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
> Dear all,
> I've been following this group with interest for a while now but haven't
> seen any firm pointers for a solution to meet my problems.
> Essentially I would like to be able to
> 1) Create reports, acknowledgements, delivery notes, invoices, etc using
> data supplied from my legacy system Unix.
> 2) Output them to PDF - some of the parameters of this would be in the
data
> feed.
> 3) Email or fax these PDFs to our customers.
> It's not possible Reporting Services to query directly our system due to
> other limitations, but can we feed RS with data either via uploading a
file
> to a "watch" directory or via a print spool queue on the windows system -
we
> already use both methods for other applications.
> The reason for a print queue is it's easy to implement from Unix to
> Windows - no messing with FTP etc, and print queues already exist in our
> application.
> The format of the data feed can be XML or indeed anything as we are source
> code holders for our product.
> The questions are:
> 1) Is this vaguely possible. ?
> 2) Can RS take it's feed from a print queue - with possibly us putting
> together the software to accept the data on the print queue.
> 3) Could it handle files dropped into a "watch directory"
> 4) Can RS create PDFs using parameters in the feed file.
> 5) Could RS, with perhaps additional development, distribute the PDFs
based
> on parameters contained with the data feed.
> If anyone could shed any light on my thoughts, or perhaps, they've done
> something like this already, I would greatly appreciate some feedback.
>
> How about this as a product Microsoft - all those legacy systems out there
> suddenly able to print something a little better than the old dot-matrix
> print-outs on pre-printed stationary. !!!
>
> Any pointers would be much appreciated.
>
> Kind Rgds
>
> Graham Goodey
>
>
>

Generalisation schema Help(GIF Schema included)

I have a CASE(law firm type) table which uses a "case number" as a PK.
Each case can have zero-many "case plans" of three different types of
case plans, namely: (civil, tax, criminal).

I have created 3 different tables for each respective "case plan" type as their
details differ quite significantly. I have created an Audit table which holds
information about updates and inserts made to these tables.

My problem is referencing a specific "case plan" in the Audit table
as the CasePlanID in the Tax,Criminal,Civil tables could be the same, and
the only uniqueness to those tables is the table name (ie: Tax,Criminal,Civil).

I have thought of placing a "CONSTANT" column in each table with the type of the
Case plan as the value, but this introduces a lot of redundancy.
I have also thought of having an audit table for each respective case plan table
but this doesnt seem like good practice.

Perhaps a Generalisation class between Case and caseplans would help.

I also have to report across the case plans too.

Any help would be much appreciated ;-)What's interesting is that you have modelled them like they're inherited (as in OOP). What is the difference between the case plan types? Different columns? Are you likely to add another case plan type at some point in time?

Edit : forgive me i'm being a goon. You clearly state that their details differ quite significantly. What are those details? Can they be normalised?|||It would seem like your case plan type can be seperated into a seperate table as your case will ALWAYS have a plan type. So you can normalise those into another table:

CREATE TABLE CasePlanTypes(
PlanTypeID INT NOT NULL,
PlanName VARCHAR(255)
)|||There will only be 3 case plan types and no more.
The types differ quite a lot. there ARE about 10 columns of similarity between all 3, however, Civil and Criminal have about 20 additional columns and between civil and criminal, about 12 of those 20 are similar in data type, but semantically different. Example:
Tax: {Gross_amount_taxed_for_quarter, Net_Amount_taxed_for_Quarter}
Civil:{Gross_Amount_Reclaimed_for_quarter,Net_amou nt_reclaimed_for_quarter}