My client and I are getting ready to start sharing reports via the web with clients.

These are the same reports we have in windows apps (VB6 and Winforms).

I want to generate the reports dynamically because there will be so many. There are thousands of clients (though only maybe 50 active at a time) and each client could have a number of projects and depending on the type of project, a *huge* variety of possible reports to choose from. We looked at this a few years ago with a company that had a whole management front end written that would juggle pdf or other doc types. But we would have had to export and send every single report for every single client. Egads. Dynamic generation please

So I seem to have these choices

Reporting Services
Win/Web Report Design: Web reports created with Microsoft’s VS.NET based design tool
Still need to create my Windows reports with Crystal or ActiveReports
Management: built in
If we keep our current set up of webserver and sql server on the same box, we are golden with no extra licensing fees

Crystal Reports (this link may come as a surprise to some…)
Win/Web Report Design: Likely will get two for one creating report that can be viewed in WinForms or ASP.NET
Management:Will have to write my own asp.net app for report management
$$: Pay through the nose to license Crystal for use on the web

ActiveReports
Win/Web Report Design:Two for one report creation for Winforms/ASP.NET
Management:Will have to write my own asp.net app for report management
$$: Affordable Licensing

Other thoughts

I can easily have an ASP.NET front end to get at a report and a WinForms front end to get at the same report.

But I have a lot of pro/con weighing to do now.

I’d be curious to hear from anyone who has gone through this thought process to solve this same type of problem…

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