A Report Designer for Clients (Dynamic Reports)

Question

I need a report designer for my clients.

My Clients don't know anything about database or DBMS. They want to have a designer to design their reports. They want to drag their custom fields in a page and simply design their reports.

I think it is not important but i tell you type of my project is Windows(winforms) application.

?????

Someone call this report types as Dynamic Reports

Answer 1

Implementing an 'ad hoc' reporting architecture (which is really what you are describing) is not a trivial exercise (nor inexpensive). However, here are some approaches that you may want to consider:

1. create a number of simple reports that can be exported to Excel. Reports can be grouped and parameterized if necessary, but the key keep the reports in a row-and-column format, with both the dimensional and fact columns. These reports can be combined in Excel for additional analysis. Most people have Excel and are fairly familiar with its usage.
2. if budget is less of an issue, consider BusinessObjects' WebIntelligence. Its drag-and-drop interface for column and filter selection is pretty simple. Be prepared, however, for a significant investment to purchase license and to develop the semantic layer (the 'Universe') that WebI requires.
3. You may want to shift away from Crystal Report to Qlikview. Its 'applications' are a bit more flexible that what you can build in CR and allow for some fairly-flexible analysis. The client is free, but the server license is not.

Answer 2

An alternative package (to Crystal Reports) that has been recommended to me is Dev Express' XtraReports.

http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/Reporting/

Unfortunately I haven't used it myself.