I have a need to add business reporting for an application I am working on. I have found very little in the way of support for MVC natively. I would like to get a feedback on tools that people have used, how they used it (native or hybrid) and if possible links to examples demonstrating integration.
I'd like to get feedback on use of
Crystal Reports
SSRS
Telerik
MVC Reporting Solutions
SSRS - requires hybrid application with winforms page hosting the report
Telerik - ???
Crystal Reports - requires hybrid application with winformats page hosting the report
FASTREPORT®.NET - has asp.net support but vendor has not tried and does not support MVC.
Here's what I did a couple years ago to get a SSRS report to run in MVC.
http://dvdtracker.livejournal.com/1810.html
Sorry for late reply, but I've found it when searching for the documentation regarding my project. Currently I use Perpetuum SharpShooter and it works in my MVC application well (after I spent some days to make it work as I need). Maybe it will be helpful for someone.
Telerik says their report viewer in the web forms product does actually work in MVC (they have a statement on their web site that the ASP.NET AJAX framework works in MVC with some special components, and I have used it in an MVC app and with what I've used, it does all work for me).
SSRS does work in MVC if you use web forms and do not use an MVC view; this is still a possibility. You have to setup the form as ASP.NET does for you, use a form with runat="server", etc. But I did get this to work.
I don't know about Crystal.
Related
We are about to implement a large web forms application to asp.net mvc3. I just read about heirarchical MVC or HMVC. I found it to be a good concept. Are there any frameworks which already supports the same?
The application is majorly a intranet with a complicated UI. We are planning to have UI like Outlook webmail like interface. Also wanted feedback on whether its good to go with MVC or silverlight can be a point of consideration?
For your question about HMVC, I believe ASP.NET MVC does have HMVC since v2.0 in the form of Areas.
Couple that with T4MVC and calling Action.PartialX() methods and you've got yourself the next buzz-word HMVC.
I'm converting a asp.net application over to asp.net mvc that uses a lot of listboxes, specifically the RadListBox from Telerik. The ListBox that comes with mvc is very basic and I'm wondering if anyone has come across a better alternative. I'm really looking for the ability to reorder, add, and delete from the client. Thanks
It seems at the moment there is no special tool (with professional features like Telerik tools) for MVC. However I suggest you using extension methods as it was my problem already:
And also you can replace it with a [Telerik MVC dropdownlist][2]
[2]: http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-mvc/razor/combobox which is Free!
Background: I currently have a Web Forms, ASP.NET 3.5/C# application which I'm interested in converting to MVC 2. It's a relatively tiny app so the exercise shouldn't take too long. The two primary functions the appliction does is allow users to
1) view and enter their data - metrics
2) view output reports of this data aggreggated at a higher level.
This second point is of concern to me as my first impression of MVC is that most of the reporting tools do not work with it. I'm currently using ReportViewer for 2) but I read here and on other sites that configuring it to work with MVC is a pain.
Are there any other types of Reporting capabilities that I could use with MVC 2? Are there some that work "out of the box"?
Or in your experience of using MVC 2, would it be easier to put together your own report? My requirement is to make a report that is similar to ReportViewer's Matrix style, with a few merged cells and a drill down by two levels. Don't know if that's way too complicated to do with MVC from scratch or not.
EDIT: Bonus if you know of any other Reporting add-ons that work with MVC besdies ReportViewer.
I have used the RDLC local reports to do this but I don't use the report viewer (even in webforms). I always stream the report straight to PDF. This works great in MVC as well since in this case I am avoiding the report viewer control.
This tutorial/post shows how to stream in MVC.
Please check my tutorial about reportviewer and mvc2 -> How to use ReportViewer 2010 in MVC.NET 2
Hope it helps you
I aim to try use DevExpress web server controls (which are awesome) in an ASP.NET MVC project (some articles I read on 'net seems to indicate the two can work well together).
I'm eager to start a new project using ASP.NET MVC, and I have been reading up a lot on ASP.NET MVC lately, but I'm not sure if I should invest a project in it. My concern is that it may turn out to be like LINQ to SQL, which is essentially been killed off since MS will not be providing updates.
Is ASP.NET MVC a viable solution to invest in my case?
Yes definitely ASP.NET MVC or any other MVC framework is worth learning. MVC pattern is all about seperation of concerns and helps you to keep your code clean.
If you like Devexpress control too much you could be disappointed because there is no server side control in ASP.NET MVC. But if you want to learn Web's underlying mechanism,HTML, Javascript , clean code, TDD ASP.NET MVC is a good way to go.
Learn first, experiment later
Asp.net MVC is a great development platform for building web applications, so it's definitely worth your time to learn it through and through.
But I suggest you first learn MVC framework and build at least one semi complex app with it and then start experimenting with mixing MVC with web forms controls. It is possible but as much you think you will gain you'll probably loose more. So I would be a bit reluctant and advise you not to match these. At least not on a Greenfield project.
In other words: presumably knowing Asp.net web forms would you suggest someone to heavy use dynamicly created user controls in their web pages if they're just about to learn the technology of Asp.net web forms? Probably not. Or mixing web forms with ASP pages on a greenfield project...
Instead try finding great either MVC-friendly server extensions or client-side libraries that will help you create rich web apps like ExtJS (I don't work for ExtJS llc, but I used the lib on a project in the past and liked it a lot). Using something like this you won't loose stuff from MVC and gain great user experience and rich functionality.
Seeing how you're asking the question on this site, I'd say YES!
DevExpress has a bunch of MVC specialized controls, that use Ajax to get data from the server via callbacks. You can see demos of the controls here:
http://mvc.devexpress.com.
I am not sure if you can use the web forms controls, my understanding is that you can't.
Also, regarding LinqToSql, you don't have to use that. I am using NHibernate for the data layer and it works very nice with MVC.
I worked with asp.net and web forms for more than 5 years and at least 1 year with the DevExpress controls for asp.net, but now I love MVC so much that I think I don't want to go back to the web forms anytime soon.
Hope this helped.
Telerik claims their controls work with ASP.NET MVC now. Has anyone already used the controls in a MVC project?
My company uses the Telerik ASP.NET controls in a large application and it works out quite well. That's why we think about using them in a MVC project.
EDIT 1:
telerik has a new go at ASP.NET MVC this looks much better then their first go at it. But it was to late for my project. http://www.telerik.com/products/aspnet-mvc.aspx
You could check out the demo application (a forums application) they built using ASP.NET MVC, announced here. Source code is available.
The demo is a simple- and stylish -
forums application. It uses 9 of the
RadControls, including RadGrid,
RadEditor, RadChart, RadTreeView and
RadUpload, to build a forum site that
has basic thread/post navigation,
formatted forum posting, user
authentication (with support for
custom avatars), and a site activity
"Statistics" view. Everything you need
to have a fully functional MVC forums
app. The source is available for
immediate download, so I encourage
anyone interested in learning more
about MVC or the RadControls in MVC to
grab the bites and study the example.
You may have already seen it, but Telerik has a blog post about how to use their controls with MVC and some of the limitations. I don't actually use their controls so I can't speak to whether the limitations are really a problem. It does appear that there is a a little more "manual lifting", so to speak, when using the controls with MVC but that there are workarounds to get most of them to work properly.
I'm hoping that they will eventually release MVC versions of their controls. I'm holding off evaluating them until that happens, but if you're already using them I'd certainly look to see how easy they would be to use with MVC. Perhaps you could update your question with an answer if you give it a try and let the rest of us know how it went.
I have been using the Telerik controls for about 6 months. I have been using the Grid and Window controls on MVC 2. Like most commercial products there are issues we have been fortunate to work them out. Once you get past the initial learning curve the controls are time savers. You can't beat the price for the amount of functionality you get.
My biggest issue is that they seem a bit sluggish responding on their forums. Maybe I'm just asking lame questions. I've been lobbying management to pay the $ for the supported version. Considering the amount of time we spend digging around to solve some of the more complicated problems I think it would be worth it.
I've just had a look at their grid and wrote a small POC project with it and must say I'm quite impressed. I'm not sure about their previous MVC controls iterations, but the current one can be a real time saver. It also fits very nicely into ASP.NET MVC ajax applications since there is a rich client-side API. Having jquery DataTables on the client side results in an even better user experience (because it is much faster), but also requires more error-prone javascript code.
As an alternative, you can check for MDBootstrap (it´s a front-end framework built on top of Bootstrap). There you will find an article with free ASP.NET MVC templates.