WPF Reporting
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Kevin Marois wrote:
Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
..take a text-file, write a method that replaces text, loop the dataset and replace the placeholders in the text-file with values, and you're done. Add some HTML, and presto, reports you can view with any "device". Add your background and all the other markup as CSS. It does not have to be complicated. If you are to sell that reporting-solution to someone else, then it has to sound complicated. Otherwise, they would simply take a text-file, write a method..
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
Or, you could go a bit further and re-use ASP.NET MVC's Razor: https://github.com/AlexCuse/RazorReport[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined." - Homer
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COBOL? HAHAHA Thanks, I needed a laugh.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
COBOL lives.
cheers Chris Maunder
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COBOL lives.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
COBOL lives.
... in someone's mind.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Have you looked at using RDLC? It's baked into Visual Studio, and apparently there's a ReportViewer that you can use with WPF. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh273267.aspx[^] I'm using it with great success in an ASP.NET MVC app.
Jon Sagara Some see the glass as half-empty, some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big. -- George Carlin Blog | Twitter | Articles
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I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Have you looked at using RDLC? It's baked into Visual Studio, and apparently there's a ReportViewer that you can use with WPF. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh273267.aspx[^] I'm using it with great success in an ASP.NET MVC app.
Jon Sagara Some see the glass as half-empty, some see the glass as half-full. I see the glass as too big. -- George Carlin Blog | Twitter | Articles
Yeah its based on SSRS. Personally I really like it.
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COBOL lives.
cheers Chris Maunder
Chris Maunder wrote:
COBOL lives.
It scares me to read that coming from you, of all people. Which vital part of codeproject.com does it run?
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I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
-
I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
We use SSRS, both the RLD server version and the RDLC embedded in the apps, works well, has a WPF viewer (no Silverlight viewer though). Oh and Roger is correct Crystal Reports were shit 20 years ago as well!
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity RAH
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Chris Maunder wrote:
COBOL lives.
It scares me to read that coming from you, of all people. Which vital part of codeproject.com does it run?
The really old bit.
cheers Chris Maunder
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COBOL lives.
cheers Chris Maunder
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If all the report contained was columns of raw text, then sure, this would work. But back to the real world... my report has a lot more content, so no, looping over data and replacing text is not an option.
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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You know you can print WPF, right? So design your report in WPF, bind, print. Bob's your proverbial Mother's Brother.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
Have you ever created a non-trivial WPF document? It's a tremendous memory hog, and leaks like a sieve. I have an in-house report generator that can create HTML or WPF docs. For a 5MB HTML document, the corresponding WPF doc is 400-500MB. Loading that into a viewer control takes several minutes (consuming 1G or more of memory), which brings the entire application to a screeching, page-faulting halt. The gains from using WPF documents (data binding et al) aren't worth the costs.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
The really old bit.
cheers Chris Maunder
Visions of a drooling, geriatric hamster, multiple IV's hooked to its body, stumbling on a rusted, urine-encrusted wheel come to mind. Yes, I wanted that picture in my head this morning :sigh:.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
If your reports aren't that complicated, I don't see the problem with generating HTML, as others have suggested. I have an in-house reporting class that uses this approach. It generates HTML for readable documents and XML for import/export, both from the same report specification. While the HTML isn't fancy, that's only limited by your skill at CSS.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Have you ever created a non-trivial WPF document? It's a tremendous memory hog, and leaks like a sieve. I have an in-house report generator that can create HTML or WPF docs. For a 5MB HTML document, the corresponding WPF doc is 400-500MB. Loading that into a viewer control takes several minutes (consuming 1G or more of memory), which brings the entire application to a screeching, page-faulting halt. The gains from using WPF documents (data binding et al) aren't worth the costs.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary Wheeler wrote:
Have you ever created a non-trivial WPF document?
Yes
Gary Wheeler wrote:
It's a tremendous memory hog,
Is it? I can't say I'd noticed - the WPF app I work on is a memory hog much worse in so many other ways, any WPF overhead is trivial by comparison!
Gary Wheeler wrote:
leaks like a sieve.
Interesting - I've been doing some work on fixing memory leaks in our app - none (so far!) has been due to WPF
Gary Wheeler wrote:
The gains from using WPF documents (data binding et al) aren't worth the costs.
with the possible exception of the fact that the OP is using WPF so may well have excellent WPF skills, existing forms and data binding that may suffice for his reporting requirements with perhaps a little tweaking. Personally I'm a fan of exporting data to excel for reporting - let the report users tweak the raw data how they want - and provide templates if necessary HTML is fine for the pretties, but rubbish if users want to play with the data
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Gary Wheeler wrote:
Have you ever created a non-trivial WPF document?
Yes
Gary Wheeler wrote:
It's a tremendous memory hog,
Is it? I can't say I'd noticed - the WPF app I work on is a memory hog much worse in so many other ways, any WPF overhead is trivial by comparison!
Gary Wheeler wrote:
leaks like a sieve.
Interesting - I've been doing some work on fixing memory leaks in our app - none (so far!) has been due to WPF
Gary Wheeler wrote:
The gains from using WPF documents (data binding et al) aren't worth the costs.
with the possible exception of the fact that the OP is using WPF so may well have excellent WPF skills, existing forms and data binding that may suffice for his reporting requirements with perhaps a little tweaking. Personally I'm a fan of exporting data to excel for reporting - let the report users tweak the raw data how they want - and provide templates if necessary HTML is fine for the pretties, but rubbish if users want to play with the data
PooperPig - Coming Soon
My reporting class serves two purposes. One, I display the generated HTML in a browser control inside the app. Two, the HTML/XML can be written to a file and used elsewhere. The best example is our 'diagnostic report'. Instead of playing 20 Questions with a customer (or our field service folks), we have them send us a diagnostic report. It takes one click to generate. It's about 5-10MB of HTML that dumps application and Windows information.
_Maxxx_ wrote:
Personally I'm a fan of exporting data to excel for reporting - let the report users tweak the raw data how they want - and provide templates if necessary
I'd use that method if I could, but it's beyond the skill set (or interest) for my customers.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
-
I posted a question [^]about WPF reporting. I got a few answers and I've been looking at them. 1) I've decided against Telerik after their Tech Support told their report suit only works if you purchase their Control suite also. 2) Infragists... NO! Used their crap in the past and I won't go back. Besides, I can't find a demo to try. Not a same to run... a demo I can download and work with. 3) CodeReason[^]... Looks promsing, but I downloaded it and I don't see any kind of designer(????) 4) Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now. This got me thinking... what happened to the days of easy reporting. It used to be simple. Is it just me or has reporting gotten REALLYL complicated?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
Fast-Report[^] Used it for Delphi years ago. Still works. In fact, just built about 10 reports with it. Available for .Net Solid design, as I am able to run X reports, and collect each report separately into one final result (for preview and/or printing), and with some effort, you can get the page numbering (x of y) to be correct in either mode (each report starts a page 1 of Yn, or each report picks up where the other left off). And the report "file" (.frp) is actually XML. I was able to tweak this outside of the report generator just fine. One other great feature: find text works in the preview! HTH, Kirk Out!
