What reporting tool do you suggest for an enterprise level ASP.Net MVC application?

Question

In one of the enterprise-level projects, we are using ASP.Net MVC for the web application portion. The reporting system is a huge system with hundreds of reports plus adhoc reporting, printing and notifications, the whole nine yards.

Although we are using MVC for the web portion, the reporting doesn't need to be in the same technology, it's an enterprise software and it can be a separate and independent modules/system.

I have considered the following options, but both have pros and cons:

• Crystal Report & Crystal Enterprise
• SQL Server Reporting Services 2005

For example, SQL Reporting Services 2005 is powerful when it comes down to predefined and adhoc reporting, but not good enough for printing. Not sure about 2008.

Considering the need, what reporting tool/system do you suggest for an enterprise level .Net based software, and why?

Answer 1

We use EasyQuery.NET (http://devtools.korzh.com/eq/dotnet) for ad-hoc reporting. EasyQuery is not a reporting solution but some kind of user-friendly query builder instead. For most cases it is enough: we just allow our users to query the data they want, then EasyQuery generates SQL, we execute it and show the result in some grid.