Report writer for Python?

[Andy Robinson]

On Fri, 11 Oct 2002 22:39:15 -0700, "Adams-Blake Co."
<aremovethiscanton at adamsremovethis-blake.com> wrote:

>Besides reportlab.com, what other reporting tools are availabe? I'm 
>especially interested in a GUI-like report writer like Crystal that can 
>generate printed reports. I want to do an application in Python but it has 
>some 40 reports. 
>
>There are some tools for Java, so I thought there must be some for 
>Python.... but I have not found any via Google searching
>
>Thanks,
>
>Al
>

I do not know of any GUI report creation tools in Python.
If they did, I'd hope they'd be front ends for us, as making PDF is
a better cross-platform solution than driving a printer.  I'd LOVE
to write one in wxPython but haven't the time....

But let me point one one experience which helped drive me to
start ReportLab inthe first place.  I worked on a project using a tool
like Crystal, it too had about 40 reports.  6 developers tried to make
all the documents consistent with each other and "nearly got there".
At one point the marketing people changed the company's phone number,
so someone had to open up all 40 and change them.  They all had
subtly different visual spacing, row heights etc which took ages
to track down.  Not to mention performance problems trying to
do 10,000 customer statements on a Sunday afternoon.

Visual tools usually don't allow reuse, and have serious limits on
what you can do.  Controlling it all in Python gives total
flexibility.

If you're a programmer, using our code you can create a family of
'drawable objects', and reuse them.  You can share and maintain
styles.  You'll get a long way in 2 days, and will reach a point
where most of those reports only need slightly different queries
and definitions.   With our approach, each extra document gets
cheaper and cheaper. With tools like Crystal, the first one is cheap
but each extra one probably costs the same forever.

If-there's-a-better-reporting-solution-for-Python-than-us-I-want
it-caught-and-shot-ly-yours, 

Andy Robinson
CEO/Chief Architect, ReportLab Inc.

p.s you can outsource the project to us if it helps ;-)