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How does Reporting compare with ActiveReports and DevExpress

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dev
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dev asked on 23 Dec 2008, 03:10 AM
Hi,
I like your controls and your web site is great. I am exploring Reporting tools options. We have used ActiveReports and know the product well. However, I  want to understand what other options are out there as well and Telerik seems to be pretty much everwhere! :-)

My questions are:
How do you compare yourself with ActiveReports and DevExpress Reporting?
- ActiveReports is a pretty mature product and looks like it is still the number one selling Reporting tool on major sites.
- Looks like DevExpress has a pretty good set of features at a lower price. Will you be adding similar features as well?
What is your reporting vision compared to these companies?
Will you keep adding features to the Reporting product or will you come out with new editions with different feature sets?

Thanks!

Dev

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Rossen Hristov
Telerik team
answered on 23 Dec 2008, 09:46 AM
Hello dev,

Thank you for your interest in our product.

We do not like to brag about our tools and what makes them better than our competition's. Rather, we prefer our customers to do it. We can give you a couple of hints where we think we are better, but this opinion is subjective and somewhat biased.

Here are several things that we consider advantages, other than the ones already listed on the Telerik Reporting Overview page, which I would recommend reviewing.

Telerik Reporting uses a very easy and intuitive skinning model, much like the one you would find when using CSS. Our initial research showed that this area was troublesome for all clients that were using other reporting solutions. This is why we provided an easy and codeless way to style reports and reports items. The WebViewer Toolbar also comes with several predefined, but easily customizable skins. 

The Report items are .NET objects and expose a number of events that allow users to interfere in the report processing/rendering. Events add additional level of report customization. As such, working with report items should be very intuitive and rich. The API is very well documented as well. Still we provide several wizards and tools which should make such customization a breeze. Page setup is very flexible and instinctive.

Another nice feature is the extensive data source support for all OLE DB providers (SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, etc), Business Objects, MS Access, XML, Web Services, etc. This allows you to use any data source for your reports, rather than being stuck to particular data extensions.

As to product support, we offer online Forums for the community, as well as several online support resources, such as a Knowledge Base, documentation, product videos, and a Code Library where we post code examples. All of this is in addition to the outstanding technical support Telerik is known for.


I would suggest downloading the tool and giving it a spin, in case you have not already done so. I am sure you will find it easy to use and intuitive.

Our long-term goals are and have always been to constantly improve our product by adding new features thus matching and even surpassing our competitors' products. We can assure you that Telerik Reporting is a very important part of the company's portfolio and will keep its place there, so you can expect many exciting features in the future.

Please, do not hesitate to contact us again if you have any other specific questions.

All the best,
Ross
the Telerik team

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