SQL->XML->???->PDF transformation

[Mi...@aigtele.com]

We are not yet users of Cocoon but are exploring using it at present.  The
above sequence
simply represents the transformations we forsee occuring in generating
business reports.
That is, an EJB will run a SQL query against our database (Oracle), format
the ResultSet into
XML, and then the XSLT processor will apply a stylesheet to transform the
report into a PDF
document, which will be accessed by our users.  (I'm leaving out steps that
don't bear on the
XSL question I'm asking.)

Currently, we generate the PDF by having the output of a non-Java report
generation tool print
its output to a PDF "printer simulator" which results in a PDF file.  We
would like to check
out some software which can be used to format the reports styling and apply
them to the data
in XML.

Does anybody have any suggestions about which 3rd-party apps to either test
or avoid?  For
example, MS Word 2000, Adobe Framemaker, Corel Wordperfect.  Are any of
these just perfect for
what we want, or do any of them really fall way short?

TIA for any help,
Michael McDonough


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