Need suggestions with ASP report generation

Ok, I currently have an ASP application. In this application, an administrator will need the capacity to print reports of the data stored in a MySQL database.

Let me note now that this is a college project, and I can only basically do what I am allowed to, rather than having full control over the server and making any necessary changes.

The problem is, I don't have permission to write files from my application. How dumb is that? Anyway, I need an alternative way. Are there any ASP PDF converters or any similar that I can query the DB, get the necessary data then present it as a printable document?

A temporary .txt file would have been sufficient, but now that that is ruled out, I need to find another way of doing this.

I'm open to suggestions :-)

If you can't write files to the server, how would you have created a PDF on the server? There are no PDF generators that are freely available for asp, and even if there was you would have have administrative access to the server so that you could install it. Surely, your professor must know the limitations of your server. What's wrong with generating the reports on the fly, why do you have to save the TXT files. Generating them on the fly is probably better anyway, that way you are sure you always have the most updated information.

You could always just output and format the report on screen as a standard html file. If you want to create dynamic PDF files I'm afraid you're out of luck unless you want to spend some money . If your looking for a cheaper solution you can buy Adobe Acrobat and use it to create a form that you can then have ASP fill out the form. But this would require the tool kit to be installed on the server (atleast I think it does). Here is a little more on doing FDF files.

Thanks for the suggestions!
Just a quick note:


My original plan was to dynamically create a file that I can send directly to the browser as an application/octet-stream and have it downloaded by the user for the purpose of printing it (at that time or later). I understand that if they DO save it for later, the data may be outdated, however, the way the application works is that there are a number of sessions for open registration. When a roster of registered users is saved/printed, the session is automatically locked so no one can add themselves to the session. If they need to generate a report on-the-fly without wanting to lock the session, it will just display as HTML within the application.

I will probably just keep it this way and for printing purposes, dynamically generate a printer-friendly version without the site design incorporated (as the site is heavy on graphics and color).

Thanks again!