What is the best solution to do Reporting on Object data for .NET ?

Question

Hi,

Our projects are using objects as the data source to reports.

Our business layer is returning single objects or IEnumerable. Our reports (quite complex) need to display value-type properties of the object, and its related objects. Typical case would be, from a List, display a master report with category data, then a subreport with data for each Product inside each Category, then a subreport for each Part of each Product, and so on.

Reporting from the database is not an option for us.

We have tried so far - Reporting Services : works but have to mess around with the XML definition of the report to define the datasource classes, very hard to work with if you use an object datasource, architecturally not too clean - Telerik Reports : quite nice (esp., nice architecture) but seems to have problems with complex reports (master/sub), does not give great paging control, rumored to have performance/crash problems (immature product).

Does anyone know a good reporting solution that can be integrated in an ASP.NET application and works well with objects as datasources ?

Answer 1

We are using ActiveReports and XtraReports. I have experience with Telerik Reports too. The XtraReports and Telerik Reports are one of the best reporting tools, which are available. I haven't any problems with master/detail reports with and with with hierarchical data too. But XtraReports and Telerik Reports has very good oficial support. If you have any problem with their components, they typicaly provides solution.

Answer 2

In addition to being able to bind a report to a collection of objects (see IListDataSource), you can also have even greater control of the data binding with ActiveReports unbound mode. See the following for more info about unbound mode in ActiveReports: http://www.datadynamics.com/Help/ARNET3/ActiveReports3_start.htm

Answer 3

Then you need FastReport.Net. It works well with any Data source you need. And in case of subreport. 1.Please check the master detail report flash demo here 2.Check the Data selection demo here

Answer 4

Two centes in addition Herberts' answer.

See online demo here: .Net reports Business Objects

This report demonstrates how to use application business objects. - register the list of business objects using the Report.RegisterData method. The list must be of IEnumerable type.

I have tryed some reporting solutions and can say - FastReport.Net really fast works with big set of BO, and really works native (w/o any additional "magic" for placing them to reports).