WPF Reporting
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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
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!
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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;Show me someone who doesn't have code maintained this way and I'll show you someone new to the game or a liar. For the sake of a little extra straw and newspapers it saves a rewrite.
cheers Chris Maunder
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Show me someone who doesn't have code maintained this way and I'll show you someone new to the game or a liar. For the sake of a little extra straw and newspapers it saves a rewrite.
cheers Chris Maunder
Yeah, I know. I have a group of C++/MFC applications still being maintained using Visual Studio 2003.NET, because the Pointy-Haired Boss types don't want to spend the resources to do regression testing after we upgrade to a more recent tool set. Like Visual Studio 2008 :-O, which is what use for our current products.
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
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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;So many choices. Html/css, xml/xslt, word templates and vbscript (or vba if you have an old version). Excel etc.. I use the Office api to generate Word docs in C#.
I may not last forever but the mess I leave behind certainly will.
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- Output data to Excel (use ClosedML from codeplex) 2) Tell users to go wild colouring in the resulting spreadsheet however they like
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- Output data to Excel (use ClosedML from codeplex) 2) Tell users to go wild colouring in the resulting spreadsheet however they like
Excel is what we do now for reporting. Very flexible for the user who has to work with it. We've used Crystal Reports in the past; it's really no good anymore!
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Kevin Marois wrote:
Crysal Report....20 years ago they were great. $hit now.
No, they were $hit then, too.
Will Rogers never met me.
I agree!
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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 have looked at a number of report writers for simple reporting needs. I have been using the Windows Forms Report Viewer Control 2012. This is a local version of SSRS with less features but adequate. The Report Viewer in VS2013 is the same as SSRS with some special new controls. I would recommend the control for simple reports. There is also a web version of the control.
Robert Neal
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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'm coming in late on this discussion, but I was wondering if you looked at all at Windward? www.windward.net. Designer sits in MS office, so document formatting is as simple as using the office tools. Wizards connect to one or more data sources.