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For both PHP and ASP.NET, which reporting tool you prefer to create, preview and print reports? Not just printing the web-page directly, any professional third-party or an open-source tool.

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HTML + CSS + (php or asp.net) is all you need, for multipage report, you should paginate the reports. i.e you can select 25 record per page.

search the web for php asp.net pagination

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  • If it is a 100 page report, do I need to keep paginating and give something like PrintScreen?
    – RPK
    Apr 16, 2011 at 4:23
  • Pagination.. hm if you code behind generate the output a counter that prints before/after each page break (follow the page break with a increment). Most web briwser does their own pagination though.
    – Independent
    Apr 16, 2011 at 8:20
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    pagination code is very easy to put up. even if you have 1000 pages report, paginating it is note a problem. There are script online that can print all the pages at once, depending on the numbers of records per page.
    – Smith
    Apr 16, 2011 at 8:36
  • Please name a few.
    – RPK
    Apr 16, 2011 at 8:40
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    here are some links art.sourceforge.net, and msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa479018.aspx or search for web based reporting html css (php|asp.net)
    – Smith
    Apr 16, 2011 at 9:53
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We use ASP.Net here and for our reports we use Crystal Reports. The pro for that one is that you can do pretty much anything with it. The cons are many and trying to figure out how to do what you want can be a bit of a chore. The major issue being googling is annoying, as everything is behind a pay wall. Everyone wants to make money off of their Crystal knowledge.

I know some teams in my company also use SQL Reporting Services. The major issue we've found there is that the report viewer runs in an ActiveX control. Not all of our clients wish to install the add on to run the report.

At my last company, we used a third party library by DevExpress that had a very nice grid. We allowed full client editing of the grid so they could arrange and group columns how they wanted, then we provided an Excel export option. Once the use got the data the way they wanted it on the screen, they could just export the report and print it that way. We also provided an option to save their settings so they could pull it out for later.

I guess it all depends what you are looking for. There is more than likely an option out there for you, but you need to figure out what your needs are and what requirements you need to fulfill for your customers.

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  • I still use Crystal Reports but with standalone apps. Is it possible to host Crystal Reports as well on the remote server to work with ASP.NET?
    – RPK
    Apr 16, 2011 at 4:24
  • @RPK - yes it is. You can either use the Report Viewer that will populate the report in an embedded Crystal Reports control, or you can write the reports to a temp folder and then serve the PDF right to the user in your web page. The second option will require a clean up script to clean out the old reports.
    – Tyanna
    Apr 18, 2011 at 13:47
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There are tools like Crystal, PDF and DevExpress. At this very moment i was tooked over a project that have a "free" installation of Crystal and ASPX-based functionality to create and print reports through the web browser.

What I often think of those third party based reports (Also as visitor), they are easy/clean enough to build up dynamically with pure CSS/HTML as output. Pros: The client doesn't have to understand controls and the server doesn't have to deal with (not seldom) heavy installations of reporting software. Such installations also make future migrations more complicated. Lastly: In the end, in some solutions, there are same amount of coding to create the output.

Yes you create even bars and (at least simple) graph with html and css. If complicated graph you have free (if importan) flash plugins that create nice outputs. Take a look at 'FusionCharts Free'.

A 500 pages report sounds too complex for pure html printing though. Due to memory issues, reading in all content to browser.

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Please take a look at Windward Reports (disclaimer - I'm the CTO there). We work very well with both PHP and ASP.NET (both C# and VB). With Windward you design the reports in Word, Excel, and/or PowerPoint so design is a breeze.

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Html + Css -- the web is a reporting layer.

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    If it is a multi-page report, how you manage?
    – RPK
    Apr 15, 2011 at 16:21
  • Getting properly paginated stuff with lots of variable-length rows can be tough. I absolutely hate dealing with Crystal, but haven't found an alternative that perfectly deals with large printed paginated reports.
    – Yablargo
    Mar 4, 2015 at 23:40
  • We give everyone iPads, pages have no more meaning.
    – Wyatt Barnett
    Mar 4, 2015 at 23:50

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