PDF Conversion

doom1701

Member
Anyone use anything other than the Infor PDF Converter with SX (not sure if it's an option in character, but we're exclusively GUI)? I'm sick of the Infor PDF Converter. For a "free" addon, it cost us enough to get into place (they didn't tell us until during the install that we needed to purchase a $1000 license for the PDF converter that they actually use behind the scenes). I've told anyone at Infor that will listen to me that the SX PDF Converter is a cluster!@#&

I've toyed around with how the PDF converter works and some basic code to try to do all of the conversion on our Linux DB server. Linux (heck, pretty much any OS) already has the tools for making the PDF, and so I'd be removing the need for another server, all of the communication, and possibly adding some configurability to boot. But I'm not a progress developer.
 

doom1701

Member
We're now 5.5, and I believe it would be "outbound"--as in turning print to email and print to view report jobs into PDF. My understanding is that the PDF converter is basically the same (with a tweak made to the code for the 5.5 upgrade) since version 3 or 4.
 

comatt1

Member
We are currently not experiencing the same issues, however, our application is nearly 50% custom, because of poor coding practices at Infor (especially with newer releases).

And I hear you with their "free add-ons". The application is free, the ability to utilize the feature will cost money and to install/maintain/support.

What are the symptoms of the errors?

Do you get any output, incorrect output, unexpected detail?

Could you provide a sample?
 

comatt1

Member
We're now 5.5, and I believe it would be "outbound"--as in turning print to email and print to view report jobs into PDF. My understanding is that the PDF converter is basically the same (with a tweak made to the code for the 5.5 upgrade) since version 3 or 4.

Is there the possibility that the code for the new PDF converter wasn't compiled, or wasn't added to the .pl? I don't know your code promotion procedures, however, the GUI recompile may not have had the correct version added to the pl.

Depending on the PROPATH that could be a problem.
 

doom1701

Member
I guess I must not have been clear--there's no errors. The PDF converter works exactly as designed.

It's just that design that blows. Here's the entire process:

User generates a report to View
Report Manager (on Unix) picks up report and runs it
Report Manager (somehow--still not sure about this) fires off an appserver event saying that there is a report that will need to be PDF
PDF Converter, which runs on a totally separate box, hears the appserver and grabs the report data. A series of scripts are generated on this box that will then FTP the resulting PDF back to the Unix box. The PDF converter is not configurable, so any 132 column reports wind up being generated as a landscape PDF to fit the page, and the page count is different than the printed version.
After the PDF is FTP'ed back to the unix box, the PDF Converter tells the appserver to change the output filename to the PDF. This then triggers the report being "available" and the report viewer then loads it.

I don't see any reason why the PDF conversion can't happen right within the report manager. The tools are already there, and it removes a huge layer from the mess. But my experience has been that NxTrend (before Infor, and probably still today) has islands of developers, and a business need is assigned to an island and that group develops a solution around their expertise, even if it really doesn't make sense. In this case, someone took a business need, handed it to some Windows developers, and they came up with a Windows based solution even though most of the Trend/SXE world runs on Unix (not that they couldn't have built it into the Windows report manager code anyway).
 

SX.E.Guru

New Member
doom, you could print your report to the screen, this will open up notepad, from there you could print to a PDF driver. Easy. You don't need the PDF convertor.
 

doom1701

Member
doom, you could print your report to the screen, this will open up notepad, from there you could print to a PDF driver. Easy. You don't need the PDF convertor.

Care to try to explain that to 120 users--most of which wouldn't know a PDF printer from a ecard?
 

SX.E.Guru

New Member
Care to try to explain that to 120 users--most of which wouldn't know a PDF printer from a ecard?

I was at a company recently with 380+ employees over 15 branches. They were having this same issue and wanted PDF viewable reports, but didn't have the PDF convertor. Here's how we handled their issue.

Several applications have PDF print drivers (Adobe, Nitro PDF, etc), other PDF drivers are free. Google results are here.

Install CutePDF Writer. Print your report to the screen, this opens up notepad. Go to File > Print > Select your printer (choose Cute PDF Writer), this will print your report to PDF. Save it as a PDF file as you normally would.

This sure beats the heck out of faxing reports to an efax account (which turns your fax into a PDF file), as I had another customer doing. Talk about a waste of money!

If you need anything else just ask or email me. Thanks.
 

doom1701

Member
Looks like someone at Infor has listened to me on this one--apparently 6.0.040 removes the external PDF converter and builds it into the report manager code.
 
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