1. FastReport 3 Enterprise - Client/Server reporting tool

The "client-server" technology is based on interaction between a client application (which inquires, analyzes, and displays requested information) and a server application that performs basic work related to various complex calculations.

There are several serious advantages of using client-server technology in your applications:

- low hardware requirements for client PCs;

- reducing of network traffic due to reducing the amount of information transferred between a client's application and a database server;

- simplicity of system management of the existing client-server;

- higher level of information protection.

However, the client-server technology has some considerable disadvantages:

- high hardware requirements for a PC used as a server;

- certain difficulties in development of client-server applications.

When developing FastReport 3 Enterprise, we take into account all major requirements for client-server applications. FastReport 3 Enterprise allows you to:

- run any reports on the server side on client request, without necessity to directly connect the client to the database server;

- manage several client requests simultaneously in separate threads; it minimizes response time of the server;

- since we use HyperText transfer protocol (HTTP, RFC 2068 [2]), you can use different existing applications, such as web-browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, Opera etc), proxy-servers, web-servers (Internet Information Server, Apache etc), together with FastReport 3 Enterprise without any additional requirements;

- use data compression algorithms (GZip, RFC 1952 [6]). This reduces network traffic and increases client-server processing power;

- use of MD5 algorithm for the MIC (Message Integrity Checksum, RFC 1321 [4], RFC 1864 [5]) increases data integrity;

- compatibility with FastReport 3 report files (with some restrictions) allows you to easily redesign your application to use client-server technology;

- standalone server application (without necessity to apply IIS, Apache or other web-server technologies) has a high processing power, short response time, and economical use of system resources (in comparison with solutions based on CGI technology);

- you can use the server as a simple HTTP server for storing and displaying any HTML documents;

- application of the Server Side Include (SSI) technology allows you to use the server as an engine for your web-site;

- managing the connection logs, error logs, and/or any additional system information allows you to keep record of the work, quickly track down the bugs and unauthorized access attempts;

- usage of authentications and "allow/deny" IP lists allows you to restrict access to the server;

- you can use several database connections in one report simultaneously;

- you can use FastReport client components for interaction between a client application and the server. You can use any web-browser as well;

- your reports may have a dialogue forms that will be used for entering some values before running a report;

- supported formats of the prepared reports are: HTML, PDF, RTF, XML, XLS, JPEG, and Text;

- you can use several modes of displaying the prepared report in your web-browser: single-page document, page-separated with page navigator.

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