Windward

Competent reporting tools should provide an end user with facilities to seamlessly connect to a datasource, and to design, create and distribute reports in as many formats as possible. Winward’s report engine is a solution that falls into this category and provides end users with an enterprise-level suite of reporting and document generation tools for report creation.

Winward's reporting suite includes a .NET engine,  Java report engine, RESTful report engine,  a set of code libraries for integrating reporting and document generation into both internal and commercial software applications and AutoTag, a template design tool that allows technical and non-technical users to design report and document templates in Microsoft Office.

The Winward reporting solutions provides users with options to connect  to an extensive range of data sources. You can connect to file based data such as XML files, Sharepoint Lists, Excel etc.  Web data like Salesforce, JSON, REST, OData etc. are also supported while Sql based data like Sql Server, DB2, Mysql, Postgresql , ODBC connections, and  big data sources like MongoDB, Cassandra and Teradata are not excluded from the list and as a matter of fact, a solitary Office based report template can connect to as many multiple data sources as possible.

Winward also provides Inclusive document generation and content management facilities.  Its report design  document components AutoTag and AutoTag Max gives users a preset way of generating and distributing documents using templates created in a Microsoft Word document that can be populated with the required information from data spooled from a specified data source. The document production process also incorporates mail merge and the final output can be in an extensive range of formats such as including DOCX, XLSX, PPTX, PDF, XML and HTML. Users also have the standard option of sending  hard copies to printers.

Ease of Use

Winward’s reporting components can be easily used by  non technical users to create reports. It automatically saves multiple versions of your generated documents and templates. Users can easily schedule reports for generation at specific periods or specific times based on user defined requirements. It has been reported that the Winward Engine can be easily deployed on one or more servers and it can easily generate a huge volume of reports per day ( i.e. hundreds of thousands) on a single server. It is not essential that Microsoft Office™ is installed on the same server. For users using the AutoTag and AutoTag Max feature, they would realize that templates can be designed using Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel. This is seen as a positive for most end users comfortable with the Microsoft Office™ solution as they would require little or no training in report  template design.

The availability of drag and drop components and wizards makes it quite easy to include tags or data fields into report templates and a feature branded as the ‘pod’ also makes this process simple for end users to condense common sets of variables to a single structure i.e name, address, phone (NAP) can be condensed as a single pod. This implies that it is not mandatory for users to learn complicated code when using this tool.

However users who require complex formatting or design might expect to encounter slight challenges. As your report grows in complexity and intricacy, you can expect to have some shades of difficulty in debugging a report which is not turning out the way it should. Besides, some users have cited that the error messages generated by the RESTful engine should be more detailed instead of a generic error message returned when a report is not generated.

Also users who want to embed reports into production apps might be required to do this by using some code snippets. This may require some training for business users who are not from a technical, programming background.

Licensing.

Currently a perpetual license is offered and priced for the following scenarios:

• For internal applications
• Deploying an application onsite on per seat basis
• Deploying a web application to clients onsite
• Hosting a web application onsite or in the cloud

The vendor also offers pricing and licensing solutions for different intended use of its solution which is not specified in the list above or based on user defined requirements. Keep in mind that in addition to the pricing attached to the license, all purchases include an annual maintenance fee, which is currently fixed at 20% and is required during the first year after purchase.

Documentation

There are quite a large amount of comprehensive documentation and resources available for this solution which include forums/blogs, online knowledge base, videos, samples, datasheets, whitepapers, web casts and slideshows. Prospective users can also schedule training with resource persons for an inclusive live training session. The support from the vendor is good and   customers have reported that the support team listens to feedback and strives to follow up on issues with the solution and onsite business challenges.

Conclusion

Windward reporting engine’s features empowers both technical end users and business users when important business reports and documents are required in high volumes.  The ability of a user to format or create report templates in the popular Microsoft Office programs such as Microsoft Word and Microsoft  Excel, using drag and drop tools to connect to data sources makes it popular for enterprise organizations that generate massive ad hoc and scheduled reports on a daily basis. It also has tools for creating graphical data, charts and other data visualization requirements which is commonly required by decision makers in the marketing, sales and finance sectors. It supports a wide variety of  data sources including SQL based data, file based data, web based data and the requisite and obligatory big data. Users scouting for a reporting solution that can be integrated  with Microsoft Office or deployed as a stand alone or connected service can try out this solution to see if it meets their reporting needs.