XML Report Engine is an AJAX-based web report engine, using ASP, javascript, XML and XSLT technologies. This report engine generates HTML reports that allow dynamic client-side, user-specified report sorting, grouping and filtering. The grouping feature can also calculate subtotals or other statistics at each group footer.

XML Report Engine features easy-to-use report toolbar and menu for users to specify custom criteria. All functions take place on the client side, without re-querying the server. Therefore, web server resources, database server resources and network bandwidth are preserved.

For a quick overview of what XML Report Engine can do for you, check out our report samples in the Live Demo page.

The XML Report Engine is to ease the workload of web programmers in developing report modules for the intranet. Most of the business reports require web programmers to generate HTML pages from a database-derived recordset. However, most of these HTML reports are static -- they cannot be further sorted, grouped or filtered by the end-user. If these functions are needed, usually the report has to make another round-trip to the server, or requires very extensive Javascript programming that need to be customized for different reports. XML Report Engine helps you turn this tedious task into an easy configuration.

In XML Report Engine, the server-side code is used to configure each recordset field and report column. It defines the default behavior of the report when it is first rendered. When the report is sent to the web browser, the end-user can use the Quick Menu or Report Toolbar to change the sorting, grouping and filtering criteria, and view the report in his or her own preference.

The XML Report Engine handles all major data types, including Boolean, String, Number and Date. It even includes the "date" data type that is not natively supported by XSLT 1.0 standard, so you don't have to worry about building your own templates any more.

The XML Report Engine comes with a default report design (see sample links above). The presentation layer of this report is separated from the data sorting, grouping and filtering features, so it is totally customizable. If you have working knowledge of HTML and XSLT, you will be able to tweak the presentation of the report to your company's branding. If necessary, our support team will also help you customize the report design.

The XML Report Engine internally supports unlimited levels of grouping and sorting, based on its special recursive algorithm. The user-interface currently implements three levels of sorting/grouping and three levels of filtering. This can be extended to support more levels.

The server-side code of XML Report Engine is currently implemented in classical ASP. The ASP.NET version is under development.