What is the status of report generation these days?
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What goes around comes around, and justice grinds slowly. It appears I have some report generation in my future for a couple of projects. I know a limited Crystal Reports version used to ship with VS 6 (yeah, that far back). I'm curious what everyone *here* uses these days. What do you hate, what will you tolerate? I'd ask what do you love, but then, I've never heard of anyone loving a report generation tool. :) I have two needs - the first is to be able to generate ad hoc reports against a couple of internal databases. People want to play with generating their own reports, so I need something relatively simple to use. The second is more production oriented for a manufacturing system. They'll be a canned set of reports generated on an order by order basis. Yes, I did a google search, but all I get are myriads of pages listing the top 10 report tools and direct links to the company pages.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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What goes around comes around, and justice grinds slowly. It appears I have some report generation in my future for a couple of projects. I know a limited Crystal Reports version used to ship with VS 6 (yeah, that far back). I'm curious what everyone *here* uses these days. What do you hate, what will you tolerate? I'd ask what do you love, but then, I've never heard of anyone loving a report generation tool. :) I have two needs - the first is to be able to generate ad hoc reports against a couple of internal databases. People want to play with generating their own reports, so I need something relatively simple to use. The second is more production oriented for a manufacturing system. They'll be a canned set of reports generated on an order by order basis. Yes, I did a google search, but all I get are myriads of pages listing the top 10 report tools and direct links to the company pages.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
hi, I highly recommend you have a look at List & Label from combit (German company). It is a commercial tool and suits you needs from easy to use based on simply hooking (almost any!!!) a datasource to it until high end drill down reports as seen by commercial BI tools. Customization options for end users are second to none. I love the tool and hate the companies restrictions in controlling their licenses. Don't get me wrong - I support regular license fees! But the way they limit and control it is a little bit to much for my understanding. However, I am using it for nearly 15 years in a large number of commercial products. And each year they come up with a new version with valuable features. best regards Michael Lutz M. A. Health Management www.BITsoftNet.de
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What goes around comes around, and justice grinds slowly. It appears I have some report generation in my future for a couple of projects. I know a limited Crystal Reports version used to ship with VS 6 (yeah, that far back). I'm curious what everyone *here* uses these days. What do you hate, what will you tolerate? I'd ask what do you love, but then, I've never heard of anyone loving a report generation tool. :) I have two needs - the first is to be able to generate ad hoc reports against a couple of internal databases. People want to play with generating their own reports, so I need something relatively simple to use. The second is more production oriented for a manufacturing system. They'll be a canned set of reports generated on an order by order basis. Yes, I did a google search, but all I get are myriads of pages listing the top 10 report tools and direct links to the company pages.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
This is why I love CodeProject. So many ideas and people willing to share them. Professionals all. My contract company is very selective in how it spends s/w $$. If a manager hears "free", they are all in. Corporate wise, they are gung-ho for using Microsoft out the wazoo. I won't mention the time I asked for a Linux VM. Heads exploded, others turned 360 degrees, and objects started moving on their own. lol. For the ad-hoc query case, Excel will work for me. For the production system I need to develop, the others are possible solutions. Thanks again
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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hi, I highly recommend you have a look at List & Label from combit (German company). It is a commercial tool and suits you needs from easy to use based on simply hooking (almost any!!!) a datasource to it until high end drill down reports as seen by commercial BI tools. Customization options for end users are second to none. I love the tool and hate the companies restrictions in controlling their licenses. Don't get me wrong - I support regular license fees! But the way they limit and control it is a little bit to much for my understanding. However, I am using it for nearly 15 years in a large number of commercial products. And each year they come up with a new version with valuable features. best regards Michael Lutz M. A. Health Management www.BITsoftNet.de
"hate the companies restrictions in controlling their licenses" I understand that. The customer I am supporting must use software from a European company. The other customer again uses s/w from a European customer. Both of the companies' licensing process are a real PITA. Had one customer have all their servers stolen with the license USB dongle still in it. Company had to buy another full license. Real hard asses.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Have you considered using Excel for some of the reports? You can put complex queries directly in it or build views to support the users. We do that for many one offs that will be reused frequently.
No, but I will. This weekend's project. Thanks
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Take a look at the open-source reporting tool Fastreport: best-open-source-reporting-tools[^]
I've been using FastReport VCL (Delphi) forever. I like that the reports are in XML, we were able to transform a ton of reports simply. It has a Client Side Report Designer, if needed (We have shipped it a couple of times). It has a server based solution as well... And of course, there is the .NET version, which I assume you are interested in. We have also leveraged the SCRIPTING language to get some VERY custom reports, and cause report page links to open records in our application!! Kinda cool features, IMO. [https://www.fast-report.com/en/product/fast-report-net/\](https://www.fast-report.com/en/product/fast-report-net/)
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What goes around comes around, and justice grinds slowly. It appears I have some report generation in my future for a couple of projects. I know a limited Crystal Reports version used to ship with VS 6 (yeah, that far back). I'm curious what everyone *here* uses these days. What do you hate, what will you tolerate? I'd ask what do you love, but then, I've never heard of anyone loving a report generation tool. :) I have two needs - the first is to be able to generate ad hoc reports against a couple of internal databases. People want to play with generating their own reports, so I need something relatively simple to use. The second is more production oriented for a manufacturing system. They'll be a canned set of reports generated on an order by order basis. Yes, I did a google search, but all I get are myriads of pages listing the top 10 report tools and direct links to the company pages.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Let me ask, what do the users want? Are they looking for the data, specific page layout, etc? I've started delivering 2 types of reports. Grid Reports (Simply a dynamic grid result of a query you can manipulate and save to Excel), AND real Reports created with a designer (FastReports). It depends on what they need, and how they intend to use them. The grid tools I have will do subtotals, and allow the users to dynamically group things, and apply their own additional filters. The core concept is: Query + Bind Variables [Filters, etc] -> Results. I like the "default" the bind variables with appropriate values, and therefore use a UNION of select "VarName","VarVal" expressions (select 'Year' as VarName, Year(now()) as VarVal) and then display that in an editable vertical grid for the user... Then apply them to the base query. It lets me put all the report queries/params in the database, and makes it easy to add without updating the program...
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I've been using FastReport VCL (Delphi) forever. I like that the reports are in XML, we were able to transform a ton of reports simply. It has a Client Side Report Designer, if needed (We have shipped it a couple of times). It has a server based solution as well... And of course, there is the .NET version, which I assume you are interested in. We have also leveraged the SCRIPTING language to get some VERY custom reports, and cause report page links to open records in our application!! Kinda cool features, IMO. [https://www.fast-report.com/en/product/fast-report-net/\](https://www.fast-report.com/en/product/fast-report-net/)
Thanks Kirk, useful information! You are right, my interests are in the open-source .NET version, haven't done much with it but I like to be prepared when the day comes that reporting is needed :-\
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MS ReportViewer control is database agnostic in local mode. Usable in a Web or Desktop application Get started with Report Viewer controls - SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) | Microsoft Docs[^] Microsoft RDLC Report Designer - Visual Studio Marketplace[^] Microsoft Reporting Services Projects - Visual Studio Marketplace[^] NuGet Gallery | Microsoft.ReportingServices.ReportViewerControl.WebForms 150.1427.0[^] NuGet Gallery | Microsoft.ReportingServices.ReportViewerControl.Winforms 150.1427.0[^] Some advices: ReportViewer Tutorial[^]
Unfortunately it doesn't work in .NET Core.
Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/
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What goes around comes around, and justice grinds slowly. It appears I have some report generation in my future for a couple of projects. I know a limited Crystal Reports version used to ship with VS 6 (yeah, that far back). I'm curious what everyone *here* uses these days. What do you hate, what will you tolerate? I'd ask what do you love, but then, I've never heard of anyone loving a report generation tool. :) I have two needs - the first is to be able to generate ad hoc reports against a couple of internal databases. People want to play with generating their own reports, so I need something relatively simple to use. The second is more production oriented for a manufacturing system. They'll be a canned set of reports generated on an order by order basis. Yes, I did a google search, but all I get are myriads of pages listing the top 10 report tools and direct links to the company pages.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
I've used Microsoft RDLC Reports for quite some time. It comes with visual studio by default and has tons of features. No external dependencies needed for development and in deployment machines. We can do grouping, sorting, charts and connect to different databases like Sql Server and Oracle. I moved from crystal reports to RDLC eventually.
Bharath
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Unfortunately it doesn't work in .NET Core.
Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/
It was not a requirement in the original question. On the other hand speaks volumes about how useful is this core thing. Everyone wanted GUI on Linux, got nothing. CLI worked before, nothing new.
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It was not a requirement in the original question. On the other hand speaks volumes about how useful is this core thing. Everyone wanted GUI on Linux, got nothing. CLI worked before, nothing new.
True, not a requirement in the original question. But I recently had the same problem (looking for a reporting tool that can generate PDF, preferably free) and in my .NET Core project I couldn't get it to work. So I thought I would mention it. I ended up using [GitHub - majorsilence/My-FyiReporting: Majorsilence Reporting, .NET report designer and viewer. Fork of fyireporting,](https://github.com/majorsilence/My-FyiReporting) Far from ideal, but it suits my needs.
Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/
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True, not a requirement in the original question. But I recently had the same problem (looking for a reporting tool that can generate PDF, preferably free) and in my .NET Core project I couldn't get it to work. So I thought I would mention it. I ended up using [GitHub - majorsilence/My-FyiReporting: Majorsilence Reporting, .NET report designer and viewer. Fork of fyireporting,](https://github.com/majorsilence/My-FyiReporting) Far from ideal, but it suits my needs.
Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/
Sorry, I didn't want to sound dck. I will wait with anything core till all the basic data controls are available and proven.
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Sorry, I didn't want to sound dck. I will wait with anything core till all the basic data controls are available and proven.
Don't worry, I wasn't offended at all :-) In general I'm quite happy with .NET Core, but sometimes it becomes indeed clear that it is not yet completely mature. And then you're on your own. So I do understand what you mean ;-)
Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/
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Let me ask, what do the users want? Are they looking for the data, specific page layout, etc? I've started delivering 2 types of reports. Grid Reports (Simply a dynamic grid result of a query you can manipulate and save to Excel), AND real Reports created with a designer (FastReports). It depends on what they need, and how they intend to use them. The grid tools I have will do subtotals, and allow the users to dynamically group things, and apply their own additional filters. The core concept is: Query + Bind Variables [Filters, etc] -> Results. I like the "default" the bind variables with appropriate values, and therefore use a UNION of select "VarName","VarVal" expressions (select 'Year' as VarName, Year(now()) as VarVal) and then display that in an editable vertical grid for the user... Then apply them to the base query. It lets me put all the report queries/params in the database, and makes it easy to add without updating the program...
fair question :). user group 1 does not know, they want to be able to do ad-hoc reports to see what they can do. group 2 is a production group, they are easy. I need to replicate the reports they have now, and then we will see. The reports they have now are driven by flat files and FORTRAN. I kid you not.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I've used Microsoft RDLC Reports for quite some time. It comes with visual studio by default and has tons of features. No external dependencies needed for development and in deployment machines. We can do grouping, sorting, charts and connect to different databases like Sql Server and Oracle. I moved from crystal reports to RDLC eventually.
Bharath
will check it out. Thanks
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759