My VB.net app provides various parameters to an external program in order to perform analyses on a user's data file. For the sake of simplicity, trust me when I say that the external app cannot return results to me aside from producing a text file as output.

Currently, the output file contains a variable number of data sections depending on the input parameters, and the individual sections are not uniform in structure (some may have 4 columns of data, some 7, etc.).

My goal, naturally, is to produce an aesthetically-pleasing report (or set of reports) from the output file, keeping cost (time and money) to a minimum.

It appears that I need to know the exact schema of the output file and produce an .xsd file in order to create a Crystal Report, but the "variable number of data sections" makes this complicated. I suppose I could try to keep the similarly-structured sections together and produce a new output file whenever there is a change in structure, creating an .xsd for each possible table definition.

As for creating the schema(s), it would seem easiest to manipulate my code such that I read the output file into a DataSet and then use the WriteXmlSchema method to produce the .xsd file(s), no?

Alternatively, I would consider using an open-source PDF generation component if I could find one that is versatile, yet simple. Speed of development is key here.

Thanks in advance for any advice or assistance.

-T