Welcome to the August 2007 issue of the Aspose Newsletter! In this month’s newsletter, we will provide some introductory information about our spotlight product: Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services. We will also look at the new and exciting features offered in the recent releases of Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services, Aspose.Grid, Aspose.Words, Aspose.Pdf, Aspose.Editor and Aspose.Words for Reporting Services. You will learn about the latest news from Aspose along with the monthly Tech-Tip, which demonstrates how you can parse Microsoft Outlook Message files programmatically using Aspose.Network.

Product Spotlight

Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services is the only solution in the market that makes possible generating true PPT and PPS reports in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (x86 and x64). All RDL report features, including tables, matrices, charts and images are converted with the highest degree of precision to Microsoft PowerPoint presentations.
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services does not have built-in abilities to export reports as Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, but after installing Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services on your server, you will get access to two additional export formats:

PPT – PowerPoint Presentation via Aspose.Slides
PPS – PowerPoint Show via Aspose.Slides

Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services create presentations on the server without utilizing Microsoft PowerPoint. Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services internally uses Aspose.Slides for .NET – the world-class component for server-side presentations processing. Please download the free evaluation version of Aspose.Slides for Reporting Services to see how it fulfills your business needs.

Generate Excel Reports in MS SQL Server using Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services

Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services allows you to deliver native Excel reports in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Unlike the built-in renderer for Excel based reports, Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services provides an extended feature set and allow RDL reports to be converted to: Excel 97-2003 binary XLS format, SpreadsheetML or the Excel 2007 XLSX format.

In the recent release of Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services, some other valuable features are also added like the support of background image and exporting data to CSV & Tab Delimited files etc. Moreover, few important bugs are also fixed. To get more details, please click here.

Experience an Improved User Interface in Aspose.Editor v2.1.0

Aspose has published a new release of Aspose.Editor. The main goal of this release was to improve user interface and provide standard controls expected from an editor application. Aspose.Editor now features embedded ruler, main menu bar, tool bar and more. Developers can use provided standard controls, customize them or replace with third-party controls. This simplifies creating user-friendly editor applications and reduces development efforts. To get more details about the improvements made in Aspose.Editor for .NET v2.1.0, please click here.

New Releases of Aspose.Pdf for Java

With the latest releases of Aspose.Pdf, java developers can enjoy some newly added important features such as JavaScript, annotations and bookmarks. JavaScript provides one of the easiest and most powerful ways to customize PDF files. Using annotation feature, you can easily add comments to the PDF during the creation process. The bookmark feature enables you to create bookmarks automatically from the headings of the document. Some important bugs (related to adding tables in PDF, getting colors information, licensing, controlling image size and setting background picture for PDF section) are also fixed. For more details, please visit the official release pages of v2.2.0.0 and v2.2.1.0.

Latest Enhancements in Aspose.Grid v1.9.2

With the addition of many new features and important enhancements, Aspose.Grid v1.9.2 has just got better. New features include the support of XHTML 1.0 based rendering, worksheets serialization, custom and auto-filtering, dragging & scrolling and command bar etc. Moreover, the performance of formula engine, XHTML rendering and other features of Aspose.Grid is highly optimized to increase its efficiency. Besides new features and enhancements, some important bugs are also fixed in this release. To get more details about the improvements made in Aspose.Grid for .NET v1.9.2, please click here.

Aspose.Words for Reporting Services even works on MS SQL Server 2008 "Katmai"

It is a great pleasure to announce that our Aspose.Words team tested Aspose.Words for Reporting Services on the CTP 3 of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 “Katmai” Reporting Services and it worked great. Moreover, the support for WritingMode property of textboxes is also added. To get more details about these features and other improvements made in Aspose.Words for Reporting Services, please check the release pages of v1.3.0 and v1.3.1.

Technical Tip

Parse Microsoft Outlook Message files programmatically

Did you know that you could parse Microsoft Outlook Message files programmatically by just a few lines of code using Aspose.Network? Here’s how:

[C#]

//Loading outlook email message file
MapiMessage msg = MapiMessage.FromFile(@"C:\WithAttachment.msg");

//Obtaining subject of the email message
Console.WriteLine("Subject:" + msg.Subject);

//Obtaining sender name of the email message
Console.WriteLine("From:" + msg.SenderName);

//Obtaining body of the email message
Console.WriteLine("Body:" + msg.Body);

//Obtaining information about number of attachments in the email message
Console.WriteLine("Attachment Count:" + msg.Attachments.Count);

//Iterating through all attachments in the email message
foreach (MapiAttachment attachment in msg.Attachments)
{
//Accessing the file name of the attachment
Console.WriteLine("Attachment:"+ attachment.FileName);

//Saving attachment
attachment.Save(attachment.LongFileName);
}

[VB]

'Loading outlook email message file
Dim msg As MapiMessage = MapiMessage.FromFile("C:\WithAttachment.msg")

'Obtaining subject of the email message
Console.WriteLine("Subject:" + msg.Subject)

'Obtaining sender name of the email message
Console.WriteLine("From:" + msg.SenderName)

'Obtaining body of the email message
Console.WriteLine("Body:" + msg.Body)

'Obtaining information about number of attachments in the email message
Console.WriteLine("Attachment Count:" + msg.Attachments.Count)

‘Iterating through all attachments in the email message
Dim attachment As MapiAttachment
For Each attachment In msg.Attachments
            Accessing the file name of the attachment
            Console.WriteLine("Attachment:"+ attachment.FileName)

            'Saving attachment
            attachment.Save(attachment.LongFileName)
Next

Aspose.Words for .NET v4.3.0 is Optimized for Windows Vista

The recent release of Aspose.Words for .NET v4.3.0 is greatly optimized for 64-bit operating systems including Windows Vista x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64. Aspose.Words is heavily tested under Windows Vista and all installation issues are fixed. Some important bugs regarding WordML export, Word to PDF conversion, bookmarks, fonts, SECTIONPAGES field and HTML stream export are also fixed. For more details, please read the complete story.

Aspose.Pdf for .NET v3.5.5.0 Mega Hotfix

In the month of July, 2007, the Aspose.Pdf team released 3 Mega Hot fixes that provide about 30 bug fixes related to Word/HTML to PDF conversion, section & page breaks, footnotes, tables, positioning of images, table of contents (TOC), page numbering, columns spanning and tab stops etc. Be sure to check out the full list of these bug fixes through their official release pages (1st, 2nd and 3rd Mega Hot fixes). Please download the latest release (as it also includes the bug fixes of previous releases) now to make your applications work better using Aspose.Pdf.