Given that Sql Server Reporting Services is designed to be open and extendable, and that the bundled Report Manager isn’t that great, are there any alternative open-source SSRS Front-ends out there?
By ‘front-ends’ I guess I mean web apps that can display the available reports on the reports server, gather the required parameters (hopefully in a more flexible way than Report Manager) and then run the reports. I’m imagining things that are built using the Asp.Net ReportViewer component, but have better parameter gathering.
I’ve found one on CodePlex: reportviewer.codeplex.com (edit: actually, this looks like a winforms solution, but its the closest I’ve found) … but I’m wondering if there are others out there, cos this seems like an area in which lots of people have had to ‘roll their own’.
To answer my own question: There didn’t seem to be any alternative open-source SSRS Front-ends out there, so I have built one and open-sourced it:
CrissCross at Github
You point it at your SSRS server and then off it goes – it can display the report catalogue and lets users run any report. So far I’ve optimised it towards reports with lots of optional parameters and lots of multi-picks, but it should be able to handle any SSRS report. And if it can’t, you can get stuck into the code and change it.
The main difference to the standard SSRS Report Manager is in the presentation of parameters: CrissCross is more ajaxy, and (being open-source) more customisable.
See the github site for more details.