General Question on Reporting Options for ASP.NET 2.0 Apps

[BruceG]

Hello,

In your opinion, what would be the best reporting option for ASP.NET 2.0 apps - keeping in mind that the target environment is a shared hosting environment (so I can't run any setup programs or things like that). I would basically be FTPing whatever files I create from my local development environment to the shared hosting site.

I am assuming the options are Crystal vs. SSRS. Which would be easiest in terms of deployment to the shared hosting site, and which specific files would need to be moved over in order for the reports to run successfully from the app?

[rjv_rnjn]

If the shared hosting server has SQL 2005 then SSRS should be pretty easy as it won't need any additional deployment from your end. But there is a possibility that they do not have the SSRS feature included while installing SQL 2k5. In SSRS the admin console is a web page and all report files and dataset files have a directory on the report server, ftp-ing your files should not be a big deal.
I've worked with CR only for desktop applications but never for web, so can't compare actually. But during desktop deployments we would have to include the CR installer with our package (that was VS 2003 and BOXI). I haven't followed much after that.

[mendhak]

Welcome back rjvrnjrnrnjrvj.

If it's a shared environment, then I'd go for plain old ASP.NET pages with minimal eye-candy on them, focus on the reporting view, and that's about it. I don't believe most hosts will install SSRS or CR on their servers, simply because most users don't use it.

[BruceG]

Thanks for your responses, gentlemen. After further investigation, mendhak, you are right that one would be hard-pressed to find a host that has CR or even SSRS installed (or would be willing to install it) on a shared site. (Many will hosts install things for you if you move up to a virtual private server or a dedicated server, but then you must pay 4, 5, or more times the monthly rate compared to the shared plan - for example, $100 PER MONTH vs. $20 per month.)

So yes, plain old ASP.NET pages seemed like the way to go. As I have done many times in the past with classic ASP pages, if the client wants a report, my web app would create a csv file that they can download into Excel and away they go. This is not unreasonable.

However, I was still trolling around on the web searching for other reporting solutions - most of what I found were very expensive ($1000-2000 USD) and/or required server-side installation.

Then, I found something that might just do the trick (can generate XLS or PDF output, does not require server installation, and is very reasonable in cost: 125 EUR or about $177 USD). The website is here:
http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/flexcelnet.asp

Seems like these guys have been around for a while, especially creating components for Borland/Dephi programmers. Anyone here ever use FlexCel?

[mendhak]

Easy, tiger.

The XLS and PDF options can be free as well. Because (I assume that) it's simple reporting, you can generate the XLS by outputting HTML from the page to the XLS file/stream. Excel is smart enough to pick up the tables and display them.

To generate PDFs, there are PDF APIs that you can get, some free, which will convert your HTML to PDFs. Look for iTextSharp, WebSuperGoo and ABCPDF.