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Document Generation Architectures

Tim MurphyTechnical Specialist

Objective• Show how open standards for business

documents allows you to build template based, business logic oriented, rich presentation document generation solutions without installing business document applications on your server.

Agenda• Review Document Generation• Competing Standards• Common Features• Why Template Based Solutions• Separating Business Logic From

Presentation• Office Open XML Demo

Review Document Generation• Print Merge• Office Automation• Office Open XML• Open Document Format

Competing Standards• Microsoft Office

– Office Open XML (OOXML)– Favored by Microsoft community– Best library from Microsoft

• Open Source– Open Document Format (ODF)– Favored by Open Source community– Best libraries in Java

Common Features• Open Standards• XML Based• Packaged As Zip Files• Do Not Require Application Binaries

Document Structure

What Is Open XML

• ISO Standard – Interesting Fact

Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here

Good Document Generation• Template Based• Isolate Presentation Code• Build/Use Business Rules Engine

Why Template Based Solutions• User Can See End Product• Complex Document Standards =

Complex Code• Cloning Document Parts Is Efficient

Isolate Presentation Code• Define Data Structures• Define Data Markup (Annotation)• Consistent Markup

Build/Use Business Rules Engine• Documents Are Data Heavy• Business Rules Engines Give Flexibility

Office Open XMLDevelopment

How The SDK Tools Are Critical• Thank you Document Reflector• The OpenXml Diff tool increases

productivity• Document Validator• OOXML Documentation

General Challenges With Document Generation• Uniquely Identify Object• Identifying text in charts• Different containers for the same object

types depending on conditions

So Let’s See Some Real Code

Demo

Real World Results• Research Director, Inc.• Microsoft Case Study • 200 presentations, each consists of 440 slides

including 372 charts/tables

Befo

re 8 hours each

1600 hours

Aft

er 10

minutes each

33 hours

ResourcesDownload OOXML SDK –http://bit.ly/4hJHg4

OpenXML Developer – http://openxmldeveloper.org/default.aspx

Eric White’s Blog - http://blogs.msdn.com/ericwhite/default.aspx

Microsoft Case Study - http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000005717

ResourcesAspose .NET Components –http://www.aspose.com/

ODF Toolkit Open Source Library – http://odftoolkit.org/

Thank You!Blogs –

codingthedocument.wordpress.comgeekswithblogs.net/tmurphy

Email -tmurphy@psclistens.com

Twitter –@twmurph

PSC’s websitewww.psclistens.com