Here are some additional information for you to consider about ActiveReports & Data Dynamics Reports:
ActiveReports Licensing:
There license is per developer. There are no royalties. You can write as many applications as you want and deploy your application to as many users or as many servers as you want without any additional costs. Read the ActiveReports License agreement here.
Reporting to Excel:
First of all, schooner is absolutely correct that all the other reporting tools have a poor scenario when exporting to excel. We recognized the same after many years of experience with ActiveReports. Frankly, it is a very hard problem to take reports designed to be paginated or deployed on the web and put them into a cell-based layout of a spreadsheet.
However, with Data Dynamics Reports', we took a completely different approach. Instead of creating just another "export to Excel", where we look at "paginated" report output and try to fit it into a spreadsheet somehow, we generate the excel output based on two things: A template and the actual data in the report. By using a template, which is actually a specially formatted excel sheet (cells have some special place holders in them) the reporting engine can output the report's content to an excel sheet completely independent of how the report is laid out when paginated. We call this concept a "Transformation Extension" for Excel since it takes the report's content and transforms it to excel based on a template.
By default DDReports will generate a default template that you will find more often than not has pretty good output. However, if the excel output is not what you want, you can instruct DDReports to save the template so you can customize the output in excel.
The best way to get an introduction to this is to watch the screencast for the Excel Transformation Extension in Data Dynamics Reports here. Jump to about 1:20 in the screencast if you get impatient and see an example of a simple template. Keep in mind this is a very simple template and the possibilities are much more sophisticated. Unfortunately, thus far we haven't published very good documentation on using the excel transformation extension template syntax yet, but let me know if you have questions and I'll help you out! Just comment on this post or send an email to our support team.
I've used it and it rocks! It has a Report Designer control that allows you users to build thier own reports on the fly and supports multiple datasources used in a single reports. Best reporting tool on the market bar none.
这些是主要问题，我知道他们正在努力解决这些问题。 就像我说的，我们使用 boh DDR 和 Active Reports。 如果您需要制作复杂的报告，请坚持使用活动报告。 如果它们很简单并且您不想花太多钱，那么 DDR 就可以了。 我看到 DDR 在每个版本中都变得越来越好，但需要一段时间才能解决问题。
只是我的观点
We use both products and they are quite different from each other. I have been a long time user of Active Reports and have loved them. But when it came time to select a .net reporting tool we did not want to spend a bunch of $$ so we decised to get their DDR product. It took me a couple of weeks to get used to it as I kept trying to use it like Active Reports. Not a good idea. Anyways, once you get used to it it does a decent job. there are some things that they need to do to improve the product. Here are the things that stand out.
You cannot access the control collection in the code area. This is a huge problem if you want to change anything like data binding inside the report.
The database connection have to be refreshed if you repopen the report int he designer. This took a while to figure out and we wondered why our fields would not show up in the preview mode when re reloaded the report.
Their new tech support is terrable. They were bought out recently and now when you call tech supprt you get someone tht has no knowledge that always tells you that someone will call you back. 80% of the time you get no call back. The otehr 20% of the time you get a sample emaild to you that has nothing to do with your issue. Now this is accorss the board with both products. THey used to have great tech support. I hope they fix this.
Those are the main problems and I know they are workign to solve the issues. Like i said we use boh DDR and Active Reports. If you need to do complicated reports stick with Active Reports. If they are simple and you do not want to spend a lto fo money then DDR works fine. I see DDR getting better with each release but it will take a while to get the knks worked out.
I've only used ActiveReports as well, but their web licensing model is a bit expensive in general in my view, espeically if you need to develop multiple apps on multiple servers. Then there is the per developer costs as well.
I use DevXpress XtraReports and have been fairly happy with it so far and it has some fairly decent export functionality and a much better licensing model.
Regarding export to Excel, I've not seen any reporting tool do it well, mainly due to the formatting issues with the report itself. What we typically do is provide the formatted report to the user, along with an additional link for an Excel export which is a similar but different query with the raw data the report uses.
Another option over formatted printable reports is using grids such as Infragistics which allow you to do sorting, grouping, summaries, and which has excellent Excel export features.
1：诚然，访问控件集合并不像使用 AR 那样直观，但您/可以/做到。 您需要在报告之外执行此操作（而不是在嵌入到报告中的脚本/代码中）。 为此，您可以将 rdlx 文件加载到 ReportDefinition 对象中。 例如：
var rpt = new DataDynamics.Reports.ReportDefinition(new FileInfo("myfile...rdlx"));
var list = (DataDynamics.Reports.ReportObjectModel.List)rpt.Report.Body.ReportItems["myList"];
var txt = (DataDynamics.Reports.ReportObjectModel.TextBox)list.ReportItems["myTextBox"];
txt.Value = "=Fields!MyField.Value";
3：不幸的是，我们正在与新的技术支持团队一起解决一些挑战。 然而，我们正在不断改进，我们正在努力尽快培养新人。 如果您对某一事件的支持有疑问，请随时给我发电子邮件并附上您的案件编号，我将尽力升级您的案件或以任何方式提供帮助（grapecity dot com 的 scott dot willeke） 。
再次感谢您的反馈，我的下一封信是根据您的反馈发送的内部信，以帮助我们改进！
Scott Willeke
Program Manager
Data Dynamics / GrapeCity inc.
This is to give more information to Bill's response in this thread. I tried to post a comment, but ran out of room :)
Bill Thanks for your honest assessment. Let me give some comments for you from the inside on the issues you mentioned:
1: Admittedly it is not quite as intuitive to access the controls collection as it was with AR, but you /can/ do it. You need to do it outside of the report (not in the script/code embedded into the report). To do it you can load the rdlx file in a ReportDefinition object. For example:
var rpt = new DataDynamics.Reports.ReportDefinition(new FileInfo("myfile...rdlx"));
var list = (DataDynamics.Reports.ReportObjectModel.List)rpt.Report.Body.ReportItems["myList"];
var txt = (DataDynamics.Reports.ReportObjectModel.TextBox)list.ReportItems["myTextBox"];
txt.Value = "=Fields!MyField.Value";
However, depending on the scenario you're after there may be a better way to handle this than changing the binding on the control/reportItem itself. It is difficult to say more without knowing more about your particular scenario/goals.
2: There was recently some discussion I was involved in on how to improve this in the very near future. The dev team was gathering use cases and doing some investigation on various caching strategies to keep hitting the database to an absolutely minimum in the designer. So look for improvements in this area in an upcoming build.
3: Unfortunately, we're working through some challenges with our new technical support team. However, we are improving constantly and we're working hard to bring up the new guys as quickly as possible. If you have a problem with one of your incidents with support feel free to email me personally with your case number and I'll work to try get your case escalated or help out in any way I can (scott dot willeke at grapecity dot com).
Thanks again for your feedback, my next letter is an internal one based on your feedback to help us improve!
Scott Willeke
Program Manager
Data Dynamics / GrapeCity inc.
I have used this product since 2004. Great performance, licensing was great. The migration from earlier versions was great. It had its flaws like ghost images for high speed high volume in production environment and missing some of the goodies you get with Crystal and bar codes issues. But this the engine was fast. Then came version 7. What a mess!! rendering a 4 x 4 label went from 320 ms to 800 ms. Try getting a patch... Good luck with that. Try getting someone on the phone suddenly became like winning lottery. If performance is not a factor and you need just simple reports, go for it. Otherwise, think twice. As for us, this is the last version if our QA can pass it. We're shopping for a replacement product.
They are good and I am not trying to frighten you, but below is the fact, in my perspective :
Pros
Active Community ... you can expect responses overnight.
Good stuff to get you started - walkr-thrus, tutorials, examples, vides etc
Internal builds - Just like Linux kernel patches you can get "hot fixe" for the problems their developer team was able to solve
Web report viewer is available and also works within Visual Studio - just like other reporting tools.
Cons
Week rendering engines - you can not expect that they are going to be exported to word/excel w/o any issues, if you use a sub-report in a table row.
Poor bug fixes - takes over a year to fix a bug - I am following one since 11-11-2011, still they keep saying "we will let you know as soon as we fix this bug"
Not too active to release stable versions. - It takes a year some times for the, to release the next stable version.
Low control over rendering, you may not use events if you wish to embed some code, but yes, Data Dynamics does provide VB.net (and just VB.net ! ) (Custom Code) support, you may use it for validation typo stuff
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以下是一些有关 ActiveReports 和 ActiveReports 的附加信息供您考虑。 数据动态报告：
ActiveReports 许可：
每个开发人员都有许可证。 没有版税。 您可以根据需要编写任意数量的应用程序，并将应用程序部署到任意数量的用户或服务器，而无需任何额外成本。 请阅读此处的 ActiveReports 许可协议。
向 Excel 报告：
首先，schooner 是绝对正确的，所有其他报告工具在导出到 Excel 时都有糟糕的情况。 经过多年的 ActiveReports 经验，我们认识到了这一点。 坦率地说，将设计为分页或部署在网络上的报告放入基于单元格的电子表格布局中是一个非常困难的问题。
然而，对于数据动态报告，我们采取了完全不同的方法。 我们不是创建另一个“导出到 Excel”，即查看“分页”报告输出并尝试以某种方式将其放入电子表格中，而是根据两件事生成 Excel 输出：模板和报告中的实际数据。
通过使用模板（实际上是特殊格式的 Excel 工作表（单元格中有一些特殊的占位符）），报告引擎可以将报告的内容输出到 Excel 工作表，完全独立于报告分页时的布局方式。 我们将此概念称为 Excel 的“转换扩展”，因为它获取报表内容并根据模板将其转换为 Excel。
默认情况下，DDReports 将生成一个默认模板，您会发现该模板通常具有非常好的输出。 但是，如果 excel 输出不是您想要的，您可以指示 DDReports 保存模板，以便您可以自定义 excel 中的输出。
对此进行介绍的最佳方法是观看 数据动态报告中的 Excel 转换扩展位于此处。 如果您不耐烦并看到简单模板的示例，请跳转到截屏视频中的大约 1:20。 请记住，这是一个非常简单的模板，并且可能性要复杂得多。 不幸的是，到目前为止，我们还没有发布关于使用 Excel 转换扩展模板语法的非常好的文档，但如果您有疑问，请告诉我，我会帮助您！ 只需对此帖子发表评论或向我们的支持团队发送电子邮件即可。
Scott Willeke
数据动态 / GrapeCity
Here are some additional information for you to consider about ActiveReports & Data Dynamics Reports:
ActiveReports Licensing:
There license is per developer. There are no royalties. You can write as many applications as you want and deploy your application to as many users or as many servers as you want without any additional costs. Read the ActiveReports License agreement here.
Reporting to Excel:
First of all, schooner is absolutely correct that all the other reporting tools have a poor scenario when exporting to excel. We recognized the same after many years of experience with ActiveReports. Frankly, it is a very hard problem to take reports designed to be paginated or deployed on the web and put them into a cell-based layout of a spreadsheet.
However, with Data Dynamics Reports', we took a completely different approach. Instead of creating just another "export to Excel", where we look at "paginated" report output and try to fit it into a spreadsheet somehow, we generate the excel output based on two things: A template and the actual data in the report.
By using a template, which is actually a specially formatted excel sheet (cells have some special place holders in them) the reporting engine can output the report's content to an excel sheet completely independent of how the report is laid out when paginated. We call this concept a "Transformation Extension" for Excel since it takes the report's content and transforms it to excel based on a template.
By default DDReports will generate a default template that you will find more often than not has pretty good output. However, if the excel output is not what you want, you can instruct DDReports to save the template so you can customize the output in excel.
The best way to get an introduction to this is to watch the screencast for the Excel Transformation Extension in Data Dynamics Reports here. Jump to about 1:20 in the screencast if you get impatient and see an example of a simple template. Keep in mind this is a very simple template and the possibilities are much more sophisticated. Unfortunately, thus far we haven't published very good documentation on using the excel transformation extension template syntax yet, but let me know if you have questions and I'll help you out! Just comment on this post or send an email to our support team.
Scott Willeke
Data Dynamics / GrapeCity
我用过它，效果很棒！ 它有一个报表设计器控件，允许用户动态构建自己的报表，并支持在单个报表中使用多个数据源。 市场上最好的报告工具没有之一。
I've used it and it rocks! It has a Report Designer control that allows you users to build thier own reports on the fly and supports multiple datasources used in a single reports. Best reporting tool on the market bar none.
我们使用这两种产品，它们彼此有很大不同。 我一直是 Active Reports 的长期用户并且非常喜欢它们。 但当需要选择 .net 报告工具时，我们不想花太多钱，所以我们决定购买他们的 DDR 产品。 我花了几周时间才习惯它，因为我一直尝试像 Active Reports 一样使用它。 这不是一个好主意。 不管怎样，一旦你习惯了它，它就会做得很好。 他们需要做一些事情来改进产品。 以下是一些突出的事情。
您无法访问代码区域中的控件集合。 如果您想要更改报表内的数据绑定等任何内容，这将是一个巨大的问题。
如果您在设计器中重新打开报表，则必须刷新数据库连接。 这花了一段时间才弄清楚，我们想知道为什么重新加载报表时我们的字段不会以预览模式显示。
他们的新技术支持非常出色。 他们最近被收购了，现在当你打电话给技术支持时，你会得到一个不了解情况的人，总是告诉你有人会给你回电。 80% 的情况下你都不会接到回电。 另外 20% 的情况下，您会收到通过电子邮件发送给您的样本，但与您的问题无关。 现在这两种产品都符合董事会的要求。 他们曾经拥有强大的技术支持。 我希望他们能解决这个问题。
这些是主要问题，我知道他们正在努力解决这些问题。 就像我说的，我们使用 boh DDR 和 Active Reports。 如果您需要制作复杂的报告，请坚持使用活动报告。 如果它们很简单并且您不想花太多钱，那么 DDR 就可以了。 我看到 DDR 在每个版本中都变得越来越好，但需要一段时间才能解决问题。
只是我的观点
We use both products and they are quite different from each other. I have been a long time user of Active Reports and have loved them. But when it came time to select a .net reporting tool we did not want to spend a bunch of $$ so we decised to get their DDR product. It took me a couple of weeks to get used to it as I kept trying to use it like Active Reports. Not a good idea. Anyways, once you get used to it it does a decent job. there are some things that they need to do to improve the product. Here are the things that stand out.
You cannot access the control collection in the code area. This is a huge problem if you want to change anything like data binding inside the report.
The database connection have to be refreshed if you repopen the report int he designer. This took a while to figure out and we wondered why our fields would not show up in the preview mode when re reloaded the report.
Their new tech support is terrable. They were bought out recently and now when you call tech supprt you get someone tht has no knowledge that always tells you that someone will call you back. 80% of the time you get no call back. The otehr 20% of the time you get a sample emaild to you that has nothing to do with your issue. Now this is accorss the board with both products. THey used to have great tech support. I hope they fix this.
Those are the main problems and I know they are workign to solve the issues. Like i said we use boh DDR and Active Reports. If you need to do complicated reports stick with Active Reports. If they are simple and you do not want to spend a lto fo money then DDR works fine. I see DDR getting better with each release but it will take a while to get the knks worked out.
Just my opinion
我也只使用过 ActiveReports，但在我看来，他们的 Web 许可模式总体来说有点昂贵，特别是如果您需要在多个服务器上开发多个应用程序。 然后还有每个开发人员的成本。
我使用 DevXpress XtraReports，到目前为止对它相当满意，它具有一些相当不错的导出功能和更好的许可模型。
关于导出到 Excel，我还没有看到任何报告工具做得很好，主要是由于报告本身的格式问题。 我们通常做的是向用户提供格式化的报告，以及用于 Excel 导出的附加链接，该导出是与报告使用的原始数据类似但不同的查询。
格式化可打印报告的另一个选择是使用 Infragistics 等网格，它允许您进行排序、分组、摘要，并且具有出色的 Excel 导出功能。
I've only used ActiveReports as well, but their web licensing model is a bit expensive in general in my view, espeically if you need to develop multiple apps on multiple servers. Then there is the per developer costs as well.
I use DevXpress XtraReports and have been fairly happy with it so far and it has some fairly decent export functionality and a much better licensing model.
Regarding export to Excel, I've not seen any reporting tool do it well, mainly due to the formatting issues with the report itself. What we typically do is provide the formatted report to the user, along with an additional link for an Excel export which is a similar but different query with the raw data the report uses.
Another option over formatted printable reports is using grids such as Infragistics which allow you to do sorting, grouping, summaries, and which has excellent Excel export features.
这是为了向此帖子中的 Bill 的回复提供更多信息。 我试图发表评论，但空间不足:)
Bill 感谢您的诚实评估。 让我从内部就您提到的问题给您一些评论：
1：诚然，访问控件集合并不像使用 AR 那样直观，但您/可以/做到。 您需要在报告之外执行此操作（而不是在嵌入到报告中的脚本/代码中）。 为此，您可以将 rdlx 文件加载到 ReportDefinition 对象中。 例如：
但是，根据您所追求的场景，可能有比更改 control/reportItem 本身的绑定更好的方法来处理此问题。 如果不了解更多关于您的特定场景/目标的信息，就很难说更多。
2：最近我参与了一些关于如何在不久的将来改进这一点的讨论。 开发团队正在收集用例并对各种缓存策略进行一些调查，以将设计器中对数据库的访问保持在绝对最低限度。 因此，请在即将推出的版本中寻找这方面的改进。
3：不幸的是，我们正在与新的技术支持团队一起解决一些挑战。 然而，我们正在不断改进，我们正在努力尽快培养新人。 如果您对某一事件的支持有疑问，请随时给我发电子邮件并附上您的案件编号，我将尽力升级您的案件或以任何方式提供帮助（grapecity dot com 的 scott dot willeke） 。
再次感谢您的反馈，我的下一封信是根据您的反馈发送的内部信，以帮助我们改进！
This is to give more information to Bill's response in this thread. I tried to post a comment, but ran out of room :)
Bill Thanks for your honest assessment. Let me give some comments for you from the inside on the issues you mentioned:
1: Admittedly it is not quite as intuitive to access the controls collection as it was with AR, but you /can/ do it. You need to do it outside of the report (not in the script/code embedded into the report). To do it you can load the rdlx file in a ReportDefinition object. For example:
However, depending on the scenario you're after there may be a better way to handle this than changing the binding on the control/reportItem itself. It is difficult to say more without knowing more about your particular scenario/goals.
2: There was recently some discussion I was involved in on how to improve this in the very near future. The dev team was gathering use cases and doing some investigation on various caching strategies to keep hitting the database to an absolutely minimum in the designer. So look for improvements in this area in an upcoming build.
3: Unfortunately, we're working through some challenges with our new technical support team. However, we are improving constantly and we're working hard to bring up the new guys as quickly as possible. If you have a problem with one of your incidents with support feel free to email me personally with your case number and I'll work to try get your case escalated or help out in any way I can (scott dot willeke at grapecity dot com).
Thanks again for your feedback, my next letter is an internal one based on your feedback to help us improve!
我自 2004 年起就使用该产品。性能出色，许可也很棒。 从早期版本的迁移非常棒。 它有其缺陷，例如在生产环境中高速高容量时会出现重影图像，并且缺少水晶和条形码问题带来的一些好处。 但这引擎很快。 然后是版本 7。真是一团糟！ 渲染 4 x 4 标签的时间从 320 毫秒缩短到 800 毫秒。 尝试打补丁...祝你好运。 尝试让某人打电话突然变得像中彩票一样。 如果性能不是一个因素并且您只需要简单的报告，那就去做吧。 否则，请三思。 对于我们来说，如果我们的 QA 能够通过的话，这就是最后一个版本。 我们正在购买替代产品。
I have used this product since 2004. Great performance, licensing was great. The migration from earlier versions was great. It had its flaws like ghost images for high speed high volume in production environment and missing some of the goodies you get with Crystal and bar codes issues. But this the engine was fast. Then came version 7. What a mess!! rendering a 4 x 4 label went from 320 ms to 800 ms. Try getting a patch... Good luck with that. Try getting someone on the phone suddenly became like winning lottery. If performance is not a factor and you need just simple reports, go for it. Otherwise, think twice. As for us, this is the last version if our QA can pass it. We're shopping for a replacement product.
他们很好，我并不是想吓唬你，但在我看来，以下是事实：
专业人士
缺点
我正在分享一些链接供您参考：
论坛 | 如何分段 | 演练 | 有用资源 | 钻取 | 视频 | 转换 Crystal 报表（请记住：反之亦然是不可能的）| 在线帮助/文档 - 用户指南 | Web 报告查看器
They are good and I am not trying to frighten you, but below is the fact, in my perspective :
Pros
Cons
I am sharing some links for your reference:
forums | How to section | Walkthrough(s) | Useful resources | drill throughs | videos | Convert Crystal reports (Remember: vice versa is not possible) | online help / Documentation - User Guide | Web Report Viewer