How to manage changes to reports in .NET?
- by Craig Johnston
If I need to offer the ability to create, view and print reports from a .NET app, I see that there are 2 options:
use a reporting component such as Microsoft.Reporting.WinForms.ReportViewer
or Crystal Reports which saves a
.rpt or similar template file that
can be modified as required without
having to re-compile the app
use System.Drawing.Printing for
reporting and store report template data in a database, which keeps things simpler
and avoids problems with bulky third
party reporting components
If I want to be able to modify a report template (which would include layout and data fields) without having to re-compile the app, would the first option above achieve this?
If I wanted to be able to modify the template without re-compiling the app, how could this be achieved with the second option? How could you store data representing the templates in a database such that it could be modified without having to re-compile the app?
