Recommend a way to present information as reports on ASP.Net

Question

Here's the nitty gritty of the problem.

• I have an excel file that users will upload.
• Then my server will parse that file and save that information to a table in my database.
• Then when a user selects to view a report, it will load that information to a webpage/grid.
• I must be able to apply filters on this 'report page' to allow dynamic filtering and whatnot.
• I must also be able to export the results to an .xls or .pdf file.

That's pretty much what I have to do and I'd like some advice on how to present that grid in a web context. I'm sure this problem isn't new or even that difficult so I ask for the tried and true approach to solve this.

Answer 1

I would recommend DevExpress controls over Telerik ones, mainly because of the PivotGrid. Telerik RadControls do not have a similar pivoting control. If you require filtering and sorting, but not free grouping and pivoting (cross-tabs), both Telerik RadGrid and DevExpress ASPxGridView can do the job.

You can also combine DevExpress PivotGrid and ASPxGridView for drill-down reports. Both support Excel and PDF export.

Before settling down with DevExpress I tried Microsoft ReportViewer control, Telerik Reporting and Telerik RadGrid. I was totally amazed by how PivotGrid made it simple to implement most reporting requirements. But it is not for all purposes. For customers who want "single click" reports that perform complex business rules and need fancy layouts, it is best to prepare the data by yourself and use a more customizable Excel or PDF library for output. DevExpress and Telerik controls do also impose a learning curve for developers, but both are well-documented with plenty of examples.

Answer 2

I'm not sure what you're asking here... if you have the Excel file then you already have the tabular data structure, it's just a matter of binding it to a DataGrid or whatever.

As for filtering and sorting, you'll have to write a bit of code to get the stock data grid to do that, but it's doable. You might want to think about investing on a control library. The Telerik ones are massive time savers for this type of thing.

And they do automatic export to PDF and Excel, so you won't have to code that either. But everything is doable, you just have to code it.

Answer 3

this is not spam or commercial for software companies, there are very nice grids and report engines done at least by DevExpress and Telerik ( among many others ) which would enable you to filter, sort, group and much more your data and export as pdf, xls, html and so on with really no much code. Check their websites for the live demo...