Reporting is an ever-present requirement for many IBM Notes and Domino systems, despite the lack of a strong native reporting capability. For Notes and Domino developers who rely on LotusScript code interacting with Microsoft Office via the Component Object Model (COM), the drawback is that the code has to execute on the Notes client. That can tie up the client for hours if the report-producing code has to read large amounts of data or if there are many reports to produce.

It would be better if you could create the reports using scheduled agents on a Domino server, but then Office components would have to be installed on the server. Domino administrators are unlikely to install Office on the same machine as Domino, partly for security reasons as well as licensing requirements, possible performance problems, and perhaps even disk space issues. And even if Office were installed on the server, your code would likely have all sorts of problems, such as unexplainable crashes and memory leaks, for example. In fact, Microsoft does not recommend using Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) Automation on the server. (OLE Automation is an older name for COM.)

Microsoft Office Web Components (OWC) is a powerful alternative that may be just what you need to produce your reports. OWC is a set of OLE components implemented as ActiveX controls. OWC is capable of producing spreadsheets and charts from code running on your Domino servers for perusal by Notes client users. Because these controls are lightweight, they don’t have the same impact on the server as the full Office package and are therefore safe to use.

I will show you how to install OWC on the server and use server-based LotusScript agents to produce OWC spreadsheets that are ready for viewing with Office applications on your users’ PCs. I will also show you a client-based alternative that may be good enough for your reporting needs — how to use embedded OWC controls on Notes forms.

OWC is supported in Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003, but don’t be put off by the fact that the most recent version of Office with support for OWC is Office 2003. Reports created as XML files using the OWC package for Office XP will open just fine with later versions of Microsoft Office.