I am looking for advise on a new development application we are starting.
I have to write 6 programs to create 6 different reports in text and excel formats (CSV). The related GUI application will launch either Notepad or Excel to view the reports.
One of the reports will be an Excel spreadsheet with calculations, many of them have subtotals. Reading data from SQL Server db tables, and also need to read a text file for additional data. The report files will be saved to a server folder. Programs also need to do an FTP of a file to a server.
The GUI appl. Will be written in Visual Basic .NET
I am not sure whether to write the report programs in .NET or Java, I have not written reports in either language before, so need to figure it out either way.
These programs will be executed from a .bat file passing parameters to the program, run by a Windows scheduled task.
Any pros/cons you can provide for whether to use VB.NET or Java ?
Guidance on how I would roll this out (create .exe files in both cases ?)