It’s a pretty classic problem. The company I work for has numerous business reports that are used to track sales, data feeds, and various other metrics. Of course this also means that there is a conglomerate of disparate frameworks, ASP.net pages, and areas where these reports can be found. There have been some attempts at consolidating these into a single entity, but nothing has stuck yet.
Since this is a common problem, and I am sure solved innumerable times, I wanted to see what others have done. For the most part these can be boiled down to the following pieces:
- A SQL query against our database to gather data
- A presentation of data, generally in a data grid
- Filtering that can vary based on data types and the business needs
- Some way to organize the reports, a single drop down gets long and unmanageable quickly
- A method to download data to alter further, perhaps a csv file
My first thought was to create a framework in Silverlight with Linq to Sql. Mainly just because I like it and want to play with it which probably is not the best reason. I also thought the controls grant a lot of functionality like sorting, dragging columns, etc. I was also curious about the printing in Silverlight 4.
Which brings me around to my original question, what is the best way to do this? Is there a package out there I can just buy that will do it for me? The Silverlight approach seems pretty easy, after it’s setup and templated, but maybe it’s a bad idea and I can learn from someone else?
It may sound contrived, but we just used SSRS. Once it is installed, the /ReportServer web site does a decent job of managing and organizing reports, permissions, etc. You can also make wrappers in front of SSRS via ASP.Net controls or via SharePoint, etc. Cost = free. It works nicely via SQL Developer edition too.