🚀 go-pugleaf

I have a project to automate the production of a series of formatted data sheets. Each data sheet consists of a page containing a number of tables and graphs. The tables have fairly particular formatting requirements (certain fonts, sizes, alignments, etc.). Generally the tables layout will be consistent from month to month, but the number of rows in each table may vary, and additional table formatting may sometimes be applied (e.g. items that should be made bold one month).

The graphs are bar charts and pie charts. Each sheet has basically the same layout, but with the placement of particular elements varying to some degree from one sheet to the next.

The sheets are updated every month with the latest available data. The data for each table comes from a database, and can be exported into any well-documented format.

I am considering using InDesign for this project, although I haven't used InDesign before. What I would like to do is have an InDesign page template that can be filled with data from the database. It seems at first glance that XML import would be the ideal tool for this, because a single XML file can target multiple text boxes on a different pages. However other comments in this forum have lead me to believe that there are limitations on the extent to which an XML document can specify the formatting to be applied to individual table cell contents.

Other comments have suggested importing tagged text to generate formatted tables. In that case can one import several different text boxes (one per table) at the same time, or does each table have to be in a separate file?

It seems like what is required is a combination XML's ability to target individual text boxes, with the tagged text formatting capabilities. Is there any way to do this?

Has anyone else attempted a similar thing? Could one can use VB scripting to automate the import of several different pieces of tagged text into different sections?

What about generating the graphs? I could perhaps create the graphs by generating appropriate Postscript? Or in SVG format? Or by scripting Illustrator?