Reporting options for web-based app

I have only tried tcpdf but it is somewhat slow in generating the reports, and I am not sure if it is robust enough (can handle subreports, etc). Any alternatives you can recommend?

Depends. We are using Crystal Reports here but is relatively slow and is asp.net.
Haven't used something for pure HTML as I only used reporting on companies I work and is mostly winforms based.
We are also using telerik but not their reporting tool. Seem interesting but you have to pay for the full features. I would not recommend any Devexpress web.Correction, I would not recommend Devexpress until their 2015 release, after that I haven't been using anything web based by them.

Thanks, I'm hoping others would chime in, I am seriously considering moving into web-based apps but I am reluctant due to the lack of robust and fast reporting tool available.

I've had my own home grown solution for report generation even prior to VB6. That report generator got super feature rich during the decade I had of VB6 coding.

When I first went web-based I initially had this VB6 report generator run via .Bat files created via back-end services that watched for requests from my web app to produce a report. And I used garbage like CutePDF to render output to a .PDF file on the web server.

Now I've actually ported the report generator from VB6 to .Net and it runs right on the web server - I get a "POST" for a report and just start creating it. I use the PDFSharp library to directly create the .PDF instead of a printer-driver like CutePDF. And it's really fast.

I've often thought about sharing that report generator code. Maybe it's time to start an open-source project.

Below is basically the language that drives the report generation. I had at one time, over a decade ago, thought of writing a .Net WYSIWYG editor for this - so you could live in a Crystal-like UI creating the reports. I've become so fluent in report creation that I never finished that project. Would be nice to do it in a web app now! Maybe it's time to open source this. Do you want to see some of the more complicated possibilities? It does IF statements - sub-reports - labels - side-by-side stuff. Draws lines and boxes - does color and shading.

Code:

---

[{"What": "Landscape"}
,{"What": "Font", "Setting": "Times New Roman"}
,{"What": "FontBold", "Setting": true}
,{"What": "Fontsize", "Value": 10}
,{"What": "Date"}
,{"What": "Fontsize", "Value": 17}
,{"What": "Column without CR", "XPos": 5300, "Column": 10}
,{"What": "Fontsize", "Value": 10}
,{"What": "Page", "XPos": 14000}
,{"What": "Skip to line", "Value": 2}
,{"What": "Item without CR", "XPos": 6800, "Item": "Town of xxxxxxxx"}
,{"What": "Skip to line", "Value": 4}
,{"What": "Query line"}
,{"What": "Skip to line", "Value": 6}
,{"What": "FontBold", "Setting": false}
,{"What": "Item without CR", "XPos": 0, "Item": "Account"}
,{"What": "Item without CR", "XPos": 1500, "Item": "Account / Transaction Description"}
,{"What": "Item without CR", "XPos": 10000, "Item": "Trans Date"}
,{"What": "Item without CR", "XPos": 11200, "Item": "Ref #"}
,{"What": "Item without CR", "XPos": 12500, "Item": "Debit Amt"}
,{"What": "Item with CR", "XPos": 13800, "Item": "Credit Amt"}
,{"What": "Skip to line", "Value": 9}
,{"What": "Draw line"}
,{"What": "Header Control", "Size": 47}
,{"What": "Column without CR", "XPos": 0, "Column": 7}
,{"What": "Column without CR", "XPos": 1500, "Column": 1}
,{"What": "Column without CR", "XPos": 10000, "Column": 2}
,{"What": "Column without CR", "XPos": 11200, "Column": 3}
,{"What": "Column (numeric) without CR"}
,{"What": "Column (numeric) with CR"}
]

---

I forgot to upload an image of the printed report - here it is

That's awesome! I can't believe no one replied to this. You mentioned open-sourcing it. I say yes, please! I'd especially like to see the VB6 code released. We have some great Classic VB6 coders who could give it a new life.