Understanding ActiveReports and Document Solutions: Licensing and Usage

You may notice references to "Document Solutions" (or GrapeCity Document) packages within your ActiveReports.NET projects. This can lead to questions about licensing and whether you can directly utilize Document Solutions APIs within your ActiveReports application. This article clarifies the relationship between ActiveReports and Document Solutions to prevent confusion and ensure you understand the licensing implications.

ActiveReports Utilizes Document Solutions, But They Are Licensed Separately

ActiveReports, in order to provide robust and advanced document processing features, internally utilizes components from Document Solutions. This means that certain Document Solutions assemblies are referenced and leveraged within the ActiveReports engine itself to power features like:

PDF Export: Document Solutions for PDF powers the comprehensive PDF export capabilities within ActiveReports.
Image Export: Document Solutions for Imaging powers ActiveReports' ability to export reports to images in the form of BMP, GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and PNG files.

Direct API Access to Document Solutions Requires a Separate License

While ActiveReports references and uses Document Solutions assemblies internally, this does not mean that a license for ActiveReports automatically includes a license to directly utilize any of the Document Solutions APIs in your own application code.

In summary:

ActiveReports uses Document Solutions for PDF and Imaging internally to provide robust PDF and Image export capabilities.
Your ActiveReports license covers the use of Document Solutions only within ActiveReports' reporting engine.
To directly call and utilize any Document Solutions API methods in your own code (e.g., to merge PDFs, manipulate documents programmatically outside ActiveReports report generation), you require a separate license for the corresponding Document Solutions product.

Identifying Document Solutions APIs and Packages

Users often encounter the following packages and may assume they can directly use them based on their ActiveReports license. Please note that using APIs within these namespaces directly requires a separate Document Solutions license:

Packages/Namespaces Associated with Document Solutions:
- DS.Documents.PDF or GrapeCity.Documents.Pdf
- DS.Documents.Imaging or GrapeCity.Documents.Imaging
- DS.Documents.Imaging.Windows or GrapeCity.Documents.Imaging.Windows
- DS.Documents.DX.Windows or GrapeCity.Documents.DX.Windows

If you attempt to directly use classes or methods within these namespaces without a Document Solutions license, you will encounter licensing errors and/or limitations in functionality.

When Might You Need a Separate Document Solutions License?

You would need a separate Document Solutions license if you want to:

Programmatically manipulate documents outside the context of ActiveReports reporting. This includes tasks like:
- Merging PDF documents
- Splitting PDF documents
- Programmatically creating or editing PDF, image, or text documents from scratch
- Converting between different document formats (e.g., PDF to image, image to PDF)
- Implementing advanced document editing or processing features within your application that are not directly related to report generation using ActiveReports.

Next Steps: Licensing and Further Information for Document Solutions

If you require the ability to directly utilize a Document Solutions API in your application for document manipulation tasks beyond ActiveReports reporting, you will need to obtain a separate license for the appropriate Document Solutions product.

To learn more about Document Solutions, including licensing options, pricing, and features, please visit the following resources: