Visual Studio - What reporting software?

[Kosmik]

Microsoft is pushing people to Azure and Power BI. You can't use ReportViewer but have to use Reporting Services as SQL Server team never migrated the ReportViewer to asp.net core. I think there is an unsupported version created by the community but don't know how good it is.
Same with Crystal Reports Viewer. It only works on webforms so is not compatible with asp.net core.

We call the ssrs renderer to return either a pdf or excel and return that to the user if they want a report. Someone suggested possibly using the same methodology and as html? Tbh, we would use the same store procedure to either render a report into excel /pdf or as a model for manipulation on a view on a page. Most users who want to manipulate data are happier with an excel document and if they want to do it online, there are better controls.

 

[cguy]

I used the others a bit more, so decided to try out PBI this year
Blue Screens of Death before Power BI - 0 in 4 years
Blue Screens of Death after installing Power BI - 6 in 1 month
Blue Screens of Death after uninstalling Power BI - 0
coincidence?

Probably a bad driver. It’s nearly impossible for an app to BSOD directly post windows XP.

 

[bchip]

Probably a bad driver. It’s nearly impossible for an app to BSOD directly post windows XP.

It felt more like it had to do with memory issues, like it ran out of memory
but didnt really investigate much

 

[Spacerat]

Used Crystal extensively and it is PoS. Dated. Depends on your tech stack and delivery channel. For winforms I used DevExpress reports. Very happy with it. You can hook it to a DB or send a report a dataset or even a list of C# objects. You can also package the report end-user designer which is powerful

 

[skimread]

We call the ssrs renderer to return either a pdf or excel and return that to the user if they want a report. Someone suggested possibly using the same methodology and as html? Tbh, we would use the same store procedure to either render a report into excel /pdf or as a model for manipulation on a view on a page. Most users who want to manipulate data are happier with an excel document and if they want to do it online, there are better controls.

Yes. You either need SSRS installed on a server with the reports hosted there and link directly to the report URL or otherwise use the SSRS ReportViewer or Crystal report Viewer to embed a report directly in your application but for that you need outdated ASP.Net Web Forms. For the latter you could possibly with ASP.NET Core app link to a reportviewer on webform via iFrame but I am not sure how to pass authentication between the two technologies as they don't work together and have incompatible security setups that can't be shared.

I noticed most clients these days prefer Power BI for reporting for cloud hosted apps. Microsoft has coined a new term call "Citizen developer" to entice admin staff to their cloud offerings like Power BI, Power App, Power Automate etc.

 

[Solarion]

Used Crystal extensively and it is PoS. Dated. Depends on your tech stack and delivery channel. For winforms I used DevExpress reports. Very happy with it. You can hook it to a DB or send a report a dataset or even a list of C# objects. You can also package the report end-user designer which is powerful

Going to check that out. Crystal seems to be a dead end and while ssrs is awesome, running reports locally have become quite difficult. I am comfortable using the old interops excel and can work some magic with that but not everyone wants that.

 

[Solarion]

Yes. You either need SSRS installed on a server with the reports hosted there and link directly to the report URL or otherwise use the SSRS ReportViewer or Crystal report Viewer to embed a report directly in your application but for that you need outdated ASP.Net Web Forms. For the latter you could possibly with ASP.NET Core app link to a reportviewer on webform via iFrame but I am not sure how to pass authentication between the two technologies as they don't work together and have incompatible security setups that can't be shared.

I noticed most clients these days prefer Power BI for reporting for cloud hosted apps. Microsoft has coined a new term call "Citizen developer" to entice admin staff to their cloud offerings like Power BI, Power App, Power Automate etc.

I have found out very quickly that trying to use report viewer and embedding reports is far too finicky and it seems unstable or prone to breaks in future. Will try DevExpress.

 

[skimread]

I have found out very quickly that trying to use report viewer and embedding reports is far too finicky and it seems unstable or prone to breaks in future. Will try DevExpress.

Paid?

 

[Solarion]

Paid?

Yeah seems I'll have to pay. For now that will have to wait. It's not cheap.

 

[pobedonosec]

For years I use FastReport (in commercial software). It's flexible, powerful and has ridiculously small size. Definitely worth to look at. See their samples - they will impress you.