Putting Excel to use in automation applications

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Jul 17, 2001

Version 2.0 of XLReporter, the automated report generation product that harnesses Microsoft Excel workbook technology for automation applications, has been released

Version 2.0 of XLReporter, the automated report generation product that harnesses Microsoft Excel workbook technology for automation applications, has been released and is available for immediate use.

New features include direct access to history data from Intellution FIX and iFIX, and the OSI PI Historian.

In addition, this version supports the new OPC-HDA (OLE for Process Control, Historical Data Access) standard, offering historic data access from a variety of other products such as Canary Labs Trend Historian, Matrikon and other OPC-HDA compliant products.

XLReporter has also been enhanced with tools to ease the development of large applications.

Clone Connections speed the development of reports with repetitive data naming conventions.

Export and Import speeds the development of large-scale reporting projects and enhances project documentation.

New features for formula insertions greatly enhance report flexibility.

"A customer in the automotive industry recently challenged us with what was considered to be "The Impossible Report.

XLReporter V2.0 rose to the occasion, not only fulfilling the initial requirements, but substantially reducing the development effort as well.

Stated Peter Gommers, SyTech VP of Engineering, "Version 2.0 is a major release, bringing fresh new capabilities to the market, and continues to be the most powerful and easy to apply automated reporting and data analysis tool available today.

Joe Andreshak, Product Manager at Microsoft says, "Excel is a natural environment for data analysis.

The automation interfaces provided by SyTech enable Excel to be used in more niche markets that require automated and unattended operation.

This is an example of how Microsoft Office applications can solve critical business problems for our customers and deliver great benefits to creative partners like SyTech.