I have a report that is currently generated by hand.  It is a 4 page report that is done by hand in Word.  Each page has text, images and dynamic data (some of which is inside paragraphs of text, bullet lists etc.  On page 4 is a data table.  I am trying to figure out the best approach to automate this report.  Should I use a Telerik Report, DocProcessing to generate it (which seems tedious with a RadFixedDocument), a word or html template??   Any suggestions?

Hello Jeffrey,

The answer to the question Telerik Reporting vs Document Processing is strictly depending on the exact scenario and the operations that will be executed over the data that will feed the report.

If your goal is to feed a DOCX, RTF or HTML template with a fair amount of data probably the better approach is to use the WordsProcessing. You can create the template by yourself or by using our RadFlowDocumentEditor which allows an easy creation of such a template in code. In addition, you could use the built-in Mail Merge functionality if needed.
By using the WordsProcessing you can export the resulted document to DOCX, RTF, HTML or PDF formats. While the PdfProcessing can generate only PDF documents but it has more capabilities specific for the format.

However, if you have a large amount of data and you need to execute different operations like grouping, filtering, sorting etc, then you could use the Telerik Reporting to do it for you. In addition to that, you could embed the Report Viewer control in your application to show the reports. Of course, the Report Viewer has the capability to export the report to different formats.

Here is also a link to a blog post comparing Telerik Reporting and Control suites. It does not include DocumentProcessing but it can be useful in understanding the Telerik Reporting better.

I hope this information is helpful.

Regards,
Mihail
Telerik by Progress

Mihail,

Thank you for the response.  It is actually not a lot of data.  The trick is the layout of the text and images, fonts/bolding, individual words or parts of sentences that are dynamic, etc... which make using Reporting or RadFixedDocument to build it tedious at best.  I have not worked with WordsProcessing and RadFlowDocumentEditor previously so I will look into that.  Thanks again!