Building reports with Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2010 Express

November 2, 2011 4:07 PM

I have developed a project management C# website using Visual Web Developer 2010 Express and SQL SERVER 2008 Express. I now have urgent need of some reporting functionality, and I am not at all clear about what my options are.

My requirements are follows:
6 simple types of basic reports.
Black and white only.
No charts.
Allow users to decide what data goes into the report.
Apart from displaying records, there will be subtotals, totals, groups, headings, dates, etc. etc.
Essentially the basic kinds of reports you would expect from any project management system. For example completed tasks for employee x from date A to date B, grouped by task type, and perhaps including the date and subtotals of the revenue generated etc..

What options are available to someone with these simple requirement which would allow me to quickly and simply produce some fuss-free basic reports. The ability to produce a printable version of a report would be a bonus but is not a requirement. I am not very experienced with this so suggestions which point to a working sample would be most helpful.
I don't know if I am need a set of classes or an add-on or a page which uses data controls in a clever way or something else entirely .

I am under a lot of pressure on this so I appreciate any help. I will be checking in on this question in about 7 hours, in case anyone has any more questions.

posted by therubettes to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Since you're using mostly MS products, you can use Reporting Services to build fairly basic reports, which seems like what you want. I believe you'll need to install "Advanced Services" if you don't already have SSRS installed. Most of the heavy lifting will be done on the SQL side and you can pretty use SSRS for layout.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 4:58 PM on November 2, 2011 [1 favorite]

Another approach is to embed the Report Viewer control in your page and perform client-side rendering of a standard SQL report (RDLC.) Essentially, you build the report and use pre-defined SQL queries to generate the data sets. The Report Viewer is a WebForms control, but this can be easily embedded in an MVC page using an iframe. http://gotreportviewer.com/ has some decent info on this.
posted by JohnFredra at 8:26 PM on November 2, 2011

Response by poster: I appreciate the responses, will check them out.
posted by therubettes at 1:32 AM on November 3, 2011