Need ad-hoc reporting component

Question

We need some simple ad-hoc reporting solution for our ASP.NET web-site.

Just an ability to build a query with user friendly interface, then show the result of this query in some table and maybe export it to Excel or print.

The solution must be quite easy for end users (our site visitors) who know nothing about databases, SQL and other tech stuff.

Answer 1

To be honest, you probably need to gather requirements and find out what kinds of reports they will be interested in running and build the reports for them. However, have you considered Crystal Reports?

Answer 2

Very common need. I suggest finding a Microsoft Partner near you.

Answer 3

EasyQuery.NET may suit your needs. It is proprietary but they have free version as well.

Answer 4

I built something like that for SQL reporting services. It required several tables to pull it off though.

1. AdHock_SQL_Reports, which included the name, path, and display name for the report.
2. AdHock_Sql_Reports_Parameters, which included the parameter name, and value, along with a flag that tells the code, the the value could be a SQL commnd to generate values on the fly.

Then you would need to build code to deal with these tables, and to generate a list of drop down lists on a web page.

What I built is pretty "fist pass" and is kind of rough around the edges.

You can also expose SQL reporting services reports to users, and have reporting services provide input fields for those reports. We have started to lean that way and away from my code. ( Its better than what I have anyway )

Answer 5

Though not .NET (yet) - but embeddable using an iframe - I'd recommend i-net Crystal-Clear 10 sporting an ad-hoc reporting component that is made to be an easy-to-use thing for non-technical users. Your users won't have to know anything about reporting at all. They simply select the kind of report, the data et voila there is a report suiting the needs.

Besides the web embeddability of the HTML output you could offer a standalone component and/or Java applet (i-net Crystal-Clear is entirely Java, but we're working hard to port bits and peaces over to .NET). The upcoming version even supports web-skins so your users / customers won't recognise its originally our product but yours ;)

Disclosure: Yap. I'm working for the company who built this.