Approach for Combit 18 w/ Old LST Files?

Greetings,

My team is working on rewriting a piece of software that uses the Combit reporting system.

The system currently features a set of about 100 reports (LST files). I believe these files were originally developed in Combit List and Label version 4. The existing product is compatible with Combit L&L 15.

We were hoping to not have to modify or redevelop the 100 reports and simply use them as is with Combit L&L 18 (preferably using the Combit C# .NET component).

None of the existing LST files have a [Database] section, which is causing me a bit of grief. In the old product, the software makes a series of LlDefineVariableExt() and LlDefineFieldExt() calls, as far as I can tell more or less “stuffing” the data directly into the report (after these calls, it makes a few formatting calls, then issues the print() command).

It’s not clear to me if I can replicate this functionality using Combit 18. From my understanding, the .NET Component requires me to bind my ListLabel object to a DataConnection for the reports to run properly.

From reading the developers guide, I suspect I may be able to use the cmll18.dll (cmbtll18.h) in a Visual C++ project and I may be able to replicate the old style of reporting. That’s from my very rudimentary understanding of the documentation.

If anyone has any general advice about an approach, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks