RDL Generation

Does anyone know of projects in development to create RDL files from HTML
and/or PDF files? I have to think that if Microsoft has created a render
from RDL to PDF that the reverse would be fairly simple to complete as well.I doubt there is such a thing currently...I certainly haven't seen it
--
Wayne Snyder MCDBA, SQL Server MVP
Mariner, Charlotte, NC
(Please respond only to the newsgroup.)
I support the Professional Association for SQL Server ( PASS) and it's
community of SQL Professionals.
"rbowlin" <rbowlin@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:D9FFCD4B-845B-42DD-895D-7815E5E0828F@.microsoft.com...
> Does anyone know of projects in development to create RDL files from HTML
> and/or PDF files? I have to think that if Microsoft has created a render
> from RDL to PDF that the reverse would be fairly simple to complete as
> well.|||There is a *huge* difference in going from RDL to <format> versus <format>
to RDL. RDL is a data-driven template for producing a report, and is far
more succinct. Any <format> is the marriage of a template and a specific
set of data.
Reverse engineering an instance of a report into its template would require
a lot of pattern recognition. Some repeating groups like headings and such
could be easily determined, but depending on the flexibility of the source
report generator, some of the other patterns could be a bear to parse.
Also, depending on the set of data used to generate a report instance, you
may not get complete fidelity in the template generation as the data set may
not exercise all of the possible scenarios.
Teaching software to parse <format> would not be impossible, but it would be
difficult and would likely capture less than the full template in the end.
A better shot would be to convert a known product's template to RDL.
Hitachi Consulting (not my firm) has engagement software that takes Crystal
Reports and produces RDL, for example.
Cheers, Mark
"rbowlin" <rbowlin@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:D9FFCD4B-845B-42DD-895D-7815E5E0828F@.microsoft.com...
> Does anyone know of projects in development to create RDL files from HTML
> and/or PDF files? I have to think that if Microsoft has created a render
> from RDL to PDF that the reverse would be fairly simple to complete as
> well.