Integration with crystal reports

[LordRevan007]

Hello there, I have to do a reporting feature for the application that I am currently working.  For reporting I will use Crystal Reports that come with visual studio. Right now I am at the design stage and I don't know what path to choose in creating the reports:
1.The first path that comes in mind is creating a view or a stored procedure on the server and use Open Access to get it's result and sending it in a report.
2.Second path that comes in my mind is making another project called ReportingServices and from there call my current context do my logic and then create an output  that will be send to the report.

The problem that arise is from the performance perspective. I don't have a lot of logic or calculation to be done, mainly some simple joins, and some aggregate functions. I am expecting a lot of records to have to be processed(an exact number I can not give you but, I am expecting over 100,000  ). I understand that the database has to be tuned also, but right no I am interested in the report.

What is the strategy that is recommended when using Open Access for reporting and how well does it behave from the performance perspective?

Thanks for any answers

LordRevan007

[Ivailo]

Hi Sorin,

I would recommend you to directly use Telerik Reporting instead. It is tightly integrated with OpenAccess ORM already and you will be able to instantly put both products to work with minimal efforts.

This approach will most certainly be easier to implement than using Crystal Reports with OpenAccess, since our ORM is not designed specifically for such purposes.

Do not hesitate to get back to us - we can assist you and further inform you about the capabilities of our Data Tools.

Regards,
Ivailo
the Telerik team

[LordRevan007]

I have look on Telerik Reporting and certainly is interesting, but my main issue is from the performance point of view. How well does it behave on large number of records?

[Steve]

Hello Lordrevan007,

Telerik Reporting is an embedded reporting engine, which primary goal is to analyze data and represent it in a human-readable format that is also suitable for printing. During this process, certain complex layout and paging rules are applied, so the great flexibility offered by the reporting engine comes at a price: increased processing times and memory footprint. As far as the processing time and consumed memory is concerned, the complexity of the report layout, the complexity of the data calculations (aggregates, conditional formatting),  the rendering media, the size of the generated document (in pages), and the capabilities of the underlying machine are crucial.
You should agree that dumping hundreds of thousands of records from a database at once hardly fit in the category of report generation and we anticipate that you would have low performance factor with any reporting engine.
Perhaps in your specific scenario another component such as our RadGrid control might be more appropriate, moreover our RadGrid control offers several export options.

All the best,
Steve
the Telerik team