What reporting tool do you think should I use in this situation?

Question

I have developed a simple HR system and now I need it to generate reports. What I want is to be able to get the data needed on the db (this will be done by my code) and store it in an object (or collection of objects) and use this data to generate the report. Please recommend me a reliable and flexible reporting tool.

The ideal scenario for me (I think) is:

1. Drop a report control or viewer in a form.
2. Design the report.
3. Get data from server and build to an object or collection.
4. Feed the data to the report or viewer.

The last time I did this was with Crystal Reports 9 and I can't say that it was a very good experience.
BTW, I am using .Net 2.0 WinForms and SQL Server 2000. Thanks!


EDIT: And if I may also add, please tell me if the reporting tool you'd recommend will work with WPF because I might port the project to WPF but I am not confident on WPF's reporting capability yet.

Answer 1

Hi,

If you are using Sql Server for the database engine you can try Sql Reporting Services. It's free (at least with some editions of Sql Server), and I believe you can pass data set objects into local reports (sounds like you'll want to use local reports, not server reports, if you go this route). The designer isn't as good as Crystal's (yet), but it's pretty good otherwise. It also has a way of approaching report building, where you effectively use 'controls' to build the report like a form instead of having 'detail' and 'header' sections etc, and that means you get a lot more control over the layout (or at least it's easier to do some layouts).