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they're a Good lot AOMEI
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Quick too - I just received an email notifying me that the support ticket had been raised!
That's 28 hours after I got the response fixing the problem.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I knew the Chinese were advanced in physics, but I didn't realise that they had invented a Time Machine!
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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Yeah, I've used their WinForms components in the past.
Impressed with both their tools and their support.
Does it come with a stand-alone report editor?
As I understand it, I need to embed their editor in my software (which isn't a problem if it's easy).
I'm pretty sure it works in the cloud too.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Does it come with a stand-alone report editor?
When I used it I made the basic design in Visual Studio.
Then users can change columns, rows and data from the dataset in real time (if you allow it) before exporting to whichever format they want. (Except powerpoint, well atleast it didn't use to be supported)
I understand that nowadays there's a standalone reporting server where clients can design their own reports.
But I doubt this is what you want as it's prohibitively expensive.
There's probably many more changes, but I don't really know since I'm backend nowadays.
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Looked it up.
Yes there's an end user report designer that you can embed in your website. But you don't need to use it.
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Sander Rossel wrote: Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. So you're saying they're good?
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I don't use it actually, I only had to have a look to it for evaluation.
Personally I like:
a.) A felxible licensing system, especally also for the designers.
b.) Web and native support (if I remember correctly)
c.) Moderate prices
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You can check out Stimulsoft Reports ( you may have a desktop app ) --- Stimulsoft Reports.NET - Stimulsoft.
It has a designer component and a runtime component(report viewer). You design the report drop it in a folder. You pick it up and render it in your code via the viewer. You give the designer to client if he needs. you code some settings or wizard to add new reports. client is happy and so are you ..they have for web and other languages and frameworks also (Stimulsoft Reports.)
Caveat Emptor.
"Progress doesn't come from early risers – progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things." Lazarus Long
modified 6-Feb-23 11:04am.
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Yeah, make a web app and tell Crystal Reports or anything like it to go bye bye.
Jeremy Falcon
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I have been using DevExpress for the past 5 years and can attest to the high quality of their development tools, especially the reporting bits.
Further, as you probably know already, there is a huge knowledge base of resources/training material available for their components, which is really important if your client will be 'hands-on' with it.
Firstly, I am not a robot! I've used Crystal Reports/Crytal Decisions/Business Objects for over 23 years now. It's great for desktop applications, but the web components suck.
Secondly, I've tried a few other DIY reporting tools/dashboard builders (asprunner.net, SAP, SSRS, etc.) over the years but they all had shortcomings or wouldn't work for cloud solutions. I'm now using DevExpress components in both desktop and web-based reporting projects and couldn't be happier. Reports are designed against a spreadsheet and the datasource is swapped at runtime to a datatable. We haven't tried the runtime report designer yet as our customers have no desire to do anything like that.
After singing their praises, let me also list the cons:
0: Fairly expensive, however it's a one-time fee. (unless you want updates after the first year)
1: The components are 'weighty' with interdependencies...it will add noticeable time to startups/compiles during your debugging sessions.
Overall, it's a matter of getting what you pay for. I bought the whole suite and have mostly focused on using the reporting (grids, pivots, reports, charts) components. It has already paid for itself many times over.
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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What you need, is a Crystal Reports, that can hold tables. A Crystal Reports that the client can code in a widely used scripting language. You need a report generator that is has a free runtime.
And MS Access did not cross your mind?
There's a lot of courses teaching MS Access, it is ubiquitous. It does reporting and can hold the data it is basing the reports on too. Exporting to MS Word and PDF is free.
That works for everyone who has a Windows-license, just Linux users miss out here.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: MS Access did not cross your mind? MS Access never crosses my mind to be honest
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I've got that with Crystal Reports
Bastard Programmer from Hell
"If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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MS Access is fantastic as a stand-alone reporting tool, and even decent as a front-end GUI for a MySQL back-end (Access has been very good to me and my odd-shaped career), but it was never designed to run as a server. Also, Microsoft really, really hates it when you do it anyway.
After searching for alternatives to the previously mentioned heresy, I noticed that if the commercial Reporting product required Java, it was a proprietary fork of Jasper Reports.
Ultimately, we ended up rolling our own with node, a smattering of npm modules and a whole lot of pounding forehead to keyboard. The WordprocessingML spec is definitely taking up far too much real estate in my brain that could be otherwise used for more worthwhile things like cat videos and dread puns.
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No recommendation - I used SSRS in my day but I have to laugh, you think your user (power or not) is going to create or modify reports. Never happened in 30+ years of building solutions.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -
RAH
I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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DevExpress' report designer is amazing but it seems like you have to write a WinForm app that wraps it as from what I'm reading, they don't have a separate stand-alone designer anymore. But the post I was reading is five years old. Still, you'd think they would provide something.
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Some years since I used it and I haven't kept up to date as the project was pulled, but I used Jasper Reports in the past with some success. Not sure if it fits what you want but it runs on its own server (so can be cloud hosted) and doesn't tie itself to any particular back-end.
Just a thought!
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Take a look at DataFlex Reports which from usage persective is quite similar to Crystal Reports.
See this link
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I was in the same situation as you. I ended up making my own solution. The user can create new reports and decide who has the right to see them. The internal test demo is at https:
(www.mymetric.net is under construction)
If you have additional questions, let me know igor.laktic@gmail.com.
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I'm using Bolt.
This is made by Syncfusion.
So far I am happy with it.
The main issue with a reporting tool is that you are locked in.
A report created in one tool doesn't work in another.
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I have been using Crystal Reports for 20 years of developing desktop applications. I really liked the ability to create just about any type of report I needed and the ability to keep the report definitions separate from the application. However, since it is COM based, .Net 6 forced me to look for an alternative. I am currently testing Telerik Reporting. Like Crystal Reports, it has a stand-alone designer (as well as a VS extension). Also, like Crystal Reports, it allows me to keep the report definitions separate from the application allowing me to simply distribute TRDP files when reports change. It does an OK job on converting your existing RPT files to TRDP format. The interface is not as user friendly as CR but I'm getting used to it.
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You should try FastReport it's amazing, I switched to it about 10 years ago.
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We are updating an app with 120 CR reports to a web app.
Progress (formally Telerik) makes a viable solution. It is also capable of importing simple CR reports. Their support is rather good. Depending on the option purchased, they have immediate phone support.
We are testing Progress, DevExpress, Grapevine, and a homegrown solution.
DevExpress has good support. I haven't tried Grapevine's.
Even old versions of CR (8.5) have conditional formatted abilities that none of the current solutions offer. An example is splitting a "section" into A,B,C, etc. with each having its own logic.
Let us know what you decide, if you don't mind.
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