'Must have' .NET components: experienced developers?

Question

I thought I'd canvas the more experienced .NET (mostly CSharp/ASP.NET) Developers on the most useful general components. I've got about $5-$7k to spend as I want on components as part of a project which involves web based graphs/reports/data visualisation, but I want to get things that will be useful for general purpose the board while the cash is there to be had! My current thoughts are as follows, any opinions welcome:

• Dundas Chart (already bought, I've had great experiences using it)
• Telerik .NET
• DevExpress DXperience (a bit of a dupe against the Telerik components but I figure if one has a strange bug or limitation you have the other as a fallback). Both seem very comprehensive.
• Was considering a diagram type control like godiagram- it doesn't look visually amazing like the old Corgent/Dundas diagram did, but I can't find a better one presently. If anyone knows a nice one that does anti-aliasing and suits workflow type diagrams, let me know!
• Considering a Telerik SiteFinity license, it looks quite good but not sure how well it'll combine with non-cms type pages, so the jury is out.

Any glaring omissions? Thanks all!

Answer 1

SQL Server reporting services (if you're using SQL Server) might help you lose the cost of a few of these. Also the no frills Google Chart API is cheap and a lot easier to integrate.

Answer 2

Development tools like ReSharper and dotTrace will be useful in writing efficient & maintainable code

Answer 3

I think Peter Blum's validator controls are great, and his data entry stuff is pretty nice too.

Answer 4

I have purchased the DevExpress and Telerik libraries and, while both are good, I ended up removing Telerik altogether and sticking with DevExpress for some pretty concrete reasons.

First, there is a great deal of overlap between the two and the two of them really share the leadership position in the ASP.NET/C# market.

DevExpress has a significant advantage with respect to their reporting tool. No tool I evaluated was perfect (I looked at four altogether) but DevExpress was the easiest to get going with, the easiest to deploy and at least as powerful as any of the others (with the possible exception of the MS tool - but that has its own deployment problems). This was a big advantage as reporting is central to my app as well.

The DevExpress charting library is very nice and integrates well with the reporting tool - another win for them. Dundas and Telerik have nice libraries as well but, after years of doing charts, ease of setup/definition is important to me and DevExpress has the edge there.

Telerik has a better online HTML editor (we feature a CMS in our product) but the DevExpress product wasn't that far behind. If I was not doing reporting/charting, I might go with Telerik on this basis alone since our CMS is quite important but it isn't enough of an advantage if you are doing reporting/charting.

The Grid products from both are great but DevExpress also offers a PivotGrid that is a spectacular data analysis tool and a nice addition to any site where data analysis is important.

Both have very good support in my experience.

The generic controls from both are very capable but, honestly, there's little reason to choose either one over the other for the controls that I care about. My focus was on date-handling controls and numerical inputs.

So, I can absolutely see people being happy with either of the two but I ended up (after using both for about two years) going with just DevExpress. It didn't hurt that the DevExpress team also wrote a book that really helped flesh out the range of uses to which their library could be put.

Hope that helps!

Answer 5

I completely agree with @John Boker, but would also add that you consider broadening your search to include development tools which might make your team faster at code production/testing/validation.

Making your code easier to build and maintain wins out over having a wide variety of expensive component libraries in my experience, and this is mostly due to having very good free versions of the controls you are looking for, yet a relative dearth of decent free code production tools.

Answer 6

Before spending money on controls you might use, you should figure out what you're doing and buy the ones you will use.

I like the asp.net chart controls, http://weblogs.asp.net/dwahlin/archive/2008/11/25/getting-started-with-the-asp-net-3-5-chart-control.aspx

but they're free.