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Reporting

Printed From: IdeaBlade
Category: DevForce
Forum Name: DevForce 2009
Forum Discription: For .NET 3.5
URL: http://www.ideablade.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1154
Printed Date: 01-May-2025 at 4:21am


Topic: Reporting
Posted By: Alan Bourke
Subject: Reporting
Date Posted: 19-Mar-2009 at 9:42am
Well, I'm looking forward to getting stuck into the new Silverlight Edition for sure, looked very impressive in the Mix 09 video.

Many Silverlight LOB applications will require strong reporting - however the only real tool I can see out there is Report Sharp-Shooter, which is, y'know, 500 rats. To me this is a fairly major hole in the whole RIA arena, what do others think ?


Replies:
Posted By: bbakermai
Date Posted: 19-Mar-2009 at 1:07pm
Couldn't agree more about dearth of solutions for reporting. A few months ago, Chris Anderson posted a nice series over on Silverlightshow.com (LOB app Parts 1-6). In Part 6, he showed how to hook up RDL files (without Reporting Services) to spit out a PDF (just requires the ubiquitous Adobe plugin) in the same window by hiding the Silverlight App and revealing the Report div. Pretty sharp if you can get the kinds of reports you need with the VS report designer. I'm sure it could be extended with some UI to control parameters (date ranges, etc.).

Bob Baker
http://www.microapplications.com/ - MicroApplications, Inc.
http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/ - Orlando CodeCamp 2009 - March 28th


Posted By: Alan Bourke
Date Posted: 19-Mar-2009 at 1:25pm
I'll check that out, nice one.

Posted By: BenHayat
Date Posted: 24-Mar-2009 at 6:03am
This is a tough issue for the third party vendors to offer reporting for SL. Here is my take.
Developing a full fledged reporting is a big job and depends heavily on text engine. Currently, SL doesn't have the best text engine, however that's something MS is working to make better. Secondly, for third party vendors to invest into this product, there must be some solid proof of "Return of Investment". If MS is already working on a reporting engine, then it's hard for smaller vendors to compete with that, and that's why no one is taking a shot at it.

Telerik has a reporting tool to create reports at server side as HTML and save it on the server and they just released 2009 Q1 for SL that also has an HTML placeholder where you can display HTML content. With this combination you can create your report and show it as HTML and have the user print the HTML page. It gets the job done, but requires lots of work keeping track of the reports per user and making sure they're deleted from server after the report has been printed ot viewed. But better than nothing.

Hope this helps!


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Best Regards!
..Ben

WPF & Silverlight Insider
http://www.MicroIntelligence.Com - http://www.MicroIntelligence.Com


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