The Lounge - CodeProject

First Prev Next

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Roger Wright6-Jan-21 19:52

Roger Wright

6-Jan-21 19:52

Wow! You're still here, Charlie? Happy New Year - this is #17 for this site, isn't it? It's getting hard to find many of us old timers here... Good to see you still above ground!

Will Rogers never met me.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

charlieg6-Jan-21 23:14

charlieg

6-Jan-21 23:14

Still kicking - just busy busy. It was a long 2020. Smile | :)

Wow, 17 years, I have to think who I was working for that far back. I was transitioning from server/mainframe development - openVMS and straight C - to the Windows desktop. Interestingly, that was the last time I was doing DB application development. The company loved their flat files. Ugh.

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

modified 7-Jan-21 5:32am.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Roger Wright7-Jan-21 7:24

Roger Wright

7-Jan-21 7:24

charlieg wrote:
It was a long 2020

That it was!

If 2020 Was A Scented Candle[^]

Will Rogers never met me.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

adudley2566-Jan-21 22:28

adudley256

6-Jan-21 22:28

While things come back round, you'll find user expectations are way different.

Everybody has an iPad or some touch device and wants instant touch and play on the reports.

We've moved to Power BI (at great cost) and people love it.

MS is putting a lot of effort behind it, and the desktop version is free if you just want to see what's possible.

If you know excel, you can create a report simply (if the devs setup certified data sets or similar, or you have access to do so).

You'll want the 'application owns the data' integration (MS website will lead you down P1 (£5k/month min) where you end up with all your customers on active directory)... However, you can just use an A1 (£700/month) under this method:
<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embed-sample-for-your-organization">Embed content in your Power BI embedded analytics application enabling better embedded BI insights for your organization - Power BI | Microsoft Docs</a>[<a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/power-bi/developer/embedded/embed-sample-for-your-organization" target="_blank" title="New Window">^</a>]

You can start with no cost, see what's possible.

The user interface is great.

What you can't do....
If you want a report of an 'invoice', this is not the tool for that. Then you're back at SSRS type reports in Power BI (also back to £5l/month min!)

If you wanted an interactive report of say, all your stock, how it's sold over time and filter it by whatever you want, then this is the tool.

If you want, it is possible to have a subset of user's with full power bi access... they can then create their own dashboards from all / any part of your reports. You can then make that available in your application.

So there is a sliding scale of how much you use it.

To anybody who's making simple spreadsheets and then wants some charts... go download power bi desktop for free and click 'get data' and choose your excel sheet... make a nice chart etc. and then you can update the sheet and the report updates too!

Given that, if the reports are for INTERNAL use only (not customers) you can, actually use power bi with no cost, I know of one huge organisation that's doing that.. and we're like great, but if you want all these 1000's of user's to access it, it's going to cost you... so the MS grand plan to take your money works in the end!

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

_WinBase_6-Jan-21 22:48

_WinBase_

6-Jan-21 22:48

My experience of any report generator over the past 40ish years is to forget them. from a programming side they are hard and time consuming to write & document, and come up with anything that an end user can learn or use easily, (and most dont want to have to learn anything new anyway). I now take one of two methods when my systems don't give a user exactly what then want or they have a 'special' requirement. firstly i offer a service to write the report for them as an add-on or integrated option to an existing format and try to keep the price down, and secondly (and more popular) is to write a csv output dumping all the data they need, whereby they can use excel to re-jig it as they want, as most companies have people familiar with it. a lesser used option is for people to do it themselves either in sql server or access for example and i will assist in explaining schema's, but that's very few. I also dont like to use 3rd party add-ons as you not only have to learn and support them, which can be time consuming for little reward, but give you a great deal of pain updating, maintaining licences or whatever. GL

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Peter Adam6-Jan-21 22:50

Peter Adam

6-Jan-21 22:50

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[^]

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Gaston Verelst8-Jan-21 23:04

Gaston Verelst

8-Jan-21 23:04

Unfortunately it doesn't work in .NET Core.

Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Peter Adam9-Jan-21 1:05

Peter Adam

9-Jan-21 1:05

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.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Gaston Verelst9-Jan-21 1:56

Gaston Verelst

9-Jan-21 1:56

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, Far from ideal, but it suits my needs.

Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Peter Adam9-Jan-21 2:59

Peter Adam

9-Jan-21 2:59

Sorry, I didn't want to sound dck. I will wait with anything core till all the basic data controls are available and proven.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Gaston Verelst9-Jan-21 3:16

Gaston Verelst

9-Jan-21 3:16

Don't worry, I wasn't offended at all Smile | :)

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 Wink | ;-)

Check out my blog at http://msdev.pro/

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

charlieg6-Jan-21 23:27

charlieg

6-Jan-21 23:27

Thanks for all the replies. I'll check them all out.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

David C. Thompson7-Jan-21 0:34

David C. Thompson

7-Jan-21 0:34

Have you looked into OpenXML? I use it to generate Excel files, and read them too but it can do more than just Excel.

How to: Create a spreadsheet document by providing a file name (Open XML SDK) | Microsoft Docs[^]

Find me on twitter @dthompsonza

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

RandMan75577-Jan-21 1:10

RandMan7557

7-Jan-21 1:10

I find Developer Express Reporting XtraReporting to meet all my needs and more.
Has a user configurable mode so users can customize and save their own versions.
Has a report server.
Powerful designer.

Worth a look. Not cheap but good tools are worth it.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Slow Eddie7-Jan-21 2:50

Slow Eddie

7-Jan-21 2:50

I use ActiveReports. I find it significantly easier to use than Crystal reports.

Does everything I want, including export to Excel, and email.

I am have been using it since VB6, and now C#.

Oh well...

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

RafagaX7-Jan-21 4:43

RafagaX

7-Jan-21 4:43

Hi. If you don't mind using a standalone software for reporting, i recommend you to try DBxtra, it's easy to use (drag and drop!), and let you edit queries if you know what you're doing (SQL code).

Disclaimer: I work for them.

"Science fiction is any idea that occurs in the head and doesn’t exist yet, but soon will, and will change everything for everybody, and nothing will ever be the same again." Ray Bradbury

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Hooga Booga7-Jan-21 5:04

Hooga Booga

7-Jan-21 5:04

I built a data warehouse and taught my users Excel Pivot Tables. Once they get it, I am never bothered for reports again. For ad-hoc queries, this is great.

I use SSRS for pre-defined reports. It is so easy to use, to update and deploy reports.

Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read. -- Groucho Marx

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Bruce Patin7-Jan-21 6:08

Bruce Patin

7-Jan-21 6:08

I have been using Microsoft Reporting Services local RDLC, migrated from the server using RDL, migrated from Crystal, and am about to just create reports in MVC views.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

R.Fuller7-Jan-21 13:41

R.Fuller

7-Jan-21 13:41

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.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

charlieg8-Jan-21 5:56

charlieg

8-Jan-21 5:56

No, but I will. This weekend's project.

Thanks

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Member 139658668-Jan-21 0:17

Member 13965866

8-Jan-21 0:17

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

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

charlieg8-Jan-21 5:21

charlieg

8-Jan-21 5:21

"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.

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

charlieg8-Jan-21 5:18

charlieg

8-Jan-21 5:18

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

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

Kirk 103898218-Jan-21 11:29

Kirk 10389821

8-Jan-21 11:29

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...

Re: What is the status of report generation these days?

charlieg10-Jan-21 16:08

charlieg

10-Jan-21 16:08

fair question Smile | :)

. 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.

Last Visit: 31-Dec-99 18:00 Last Update: 23-Apr-24 3:02

Refresh

ᐊ Prev 1...3226 3227 3228 322932303231 3232 3233 3234 3235 Next ᐅ

Use Ctrl+Left/Right to switch messages, Ctrl+Up/Down to switch threads, Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right to switch pages.

Welcome to the Lounge