Reporting

[Peter Morris]

Hi all

Which reporting tool should I use in VS2005 if I want to report on a
collection of objects rather than a Dataset?

I have components to do all of the databinding + object fetching etc, I just
need to know which reporting tool I should use within my app rather than
running one in SQL Server.

Thanks

Pete

 

[Marc Gravell]

Well, DataSet (despite the name) isn't limited to data from databases
(you can fill one at runtime); but more to the point, I have
successfully used the MS report-viewer to write rdlc reports based on
objects. The problem, however, is that it has a distressing habit of
losing the bindings if you change the schema at all - kinda like the
forms IDE, but perhaps worse. IIRC, you just use (on the report-viewer
control) .LoadReportDefinition(), .SetParameters(),
and .DataSources.Add() .

Other reporting frameworks are available - YMMV.

Marc

 

[Bob Johnson]

You'll get the knee-jerk "use Crystal, dude"...

but you'd do very well to take a look at ActiveReports by DataDynamics
(http://www.datadynamics.com/default.aspx). IMHO ActiveReports is perfect
for anyone wanting to programmatically work with reports. I has no
proprietary scripting language and is much more straight-forward to work
with than Crystal. You can bind reports to any practically anything in .NET
that is bindable - including your custom collections and of course the usual
gang of suspects (DataSet etc).

-HTH

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Which reporting tool should I use in VS2005 if I want to report on a
collection of objects rather than a Dataset?

Depends on your requirements, but if you just need to get a report up on
screen with the option to print etc, I'd use a PDF generator.

This is my preferred one: http://www.siberix.com

 

[Robert Fuchs]

IMHO the best is http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/WinForms/XtraReports
Online Demos here: http://demos.devexpress.com/XtraReportsDemos

regards. Robert

 

[sloan]

I concur on the ActiveReports.

They are able to bind to IList's I believe.

Based on this article:
http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/posts/2148.aspx

You see you have to artificially take "real" objects/collections and put
them into a DataSet for Crystal.

I hate Crystal Reports, fyi. It has been screwing me for over 10 years now.
(with VB4).

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

I hate Crystal Reports

Me too...

 

[Andrus]

Best is

www.fyireporting.com

Open source, Apache license.

Version 3 released Yesterday.

Andrus.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Morris" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: microsoft.public.dotnet.languages.csharp
Sent: Thursday, July 26, 2007 5:52 PM
Subject: Reporting

 

[Bruce Wood]

I concur on the ActiveReports.

They are able to bind to IList's I believe.

Based on this article:http://scottonwriting.net/sowblog/posts/2148.aspx

You see you have to artificially take "real" objects/collections and put
them into a DataSet for Crystal.

I hate Crystal Reports, fyi. It has been screwing me for over 10 years now.
(with VB4).

I must agree. I'm still doing battle with Crystal. Its printer support
is a disaster.

 

[Nicholas Paldino [.NET/C# MVP]]

I don't hate Crystal Reports. I loathe it (or, substitute any other
synonym for hate).

 

[Marc Gravell]

Can I just say "ta" to all the other respondants... some other
interesting avenues to look at in place of the default MS offerings...

(plus like everybody else, I loathe Crystal... I'm kinda sorry y'all
reminded me of it ;-p)

Marc