ASP.NET Reporting alternatives for shared hosting - asp.net

I am using a ASP.NET with c# website and MSSQL Server 2005 DB.
Will be hosting on a shared hosting provider..so i cannot install any runtimes/other software or services. i dont have MSRS (Microsot reporting services) or others as well.
I need to find some good reporting alternatives besides Crystal Reports and other heavily paid services.
I need to be able to generate reports with grouping , query based, cumulative, formula based, sub reports within one report, simple graphs and charts, etc
Please help me with this issue.
(i tried LogiReports from http://www.freereporting.com/product/index.html)
but it is difficult to use.
Thanks and Regards
prad

Have you considered Telerik Reports? It does not need any special software installed on your deployment servers. The reports that you create are in a dll that deploy along with your application. It is not free, but it is still very nice.

Related

How to host a .NET website in the server

How do I host a ASP.NET website on a server? I have created a website using Visual Studio 2010 as a frontend and sqlserver 2008 as a backend. What are the steps I should take for hosting the website on a server? Do I have to buy any licenses for .NET or SQLServer? If so, how much will this cost?
I use Arvixe (arvixe.com) for all my web hosting needs. They are great, cheap, and offer .NET support. Their administration panel is absolutely easy to use (creating databases, etc.).
Go to Arvixe.com, sign up with one of their ASP.NET plans. They will email you FTP information on how to upload your file content, as well as information on how to log into your admin panel to create the database you need. If you need any help with this process, they have a 24/7 live chat feature and they can help you immediately.
There are numerous ways to host an ASP.Net site on the internet. You will have to research the various methods turned up by searching to see what is best for you.
You can always host it from your own computer with Microsoft's Internet Information Services. This is a solution if you are doing this as a simple project. You'll have to activate/install IIS by checking it off under "Add/Remove Windows Components".
But to be honest, I would take Carmine's suggestion and start up an Arvixe account. You can pay $8/month and have up to 6 websites at any given time. I use it constantly for demonstrating web projects for my company. The only problem I have with them is, as I mentioned in my comment to Carmine's question, their service is sometimes completely down. Today was a great example, I was doing some local work on my site, but of course many of my files and all of my databases are accessed via Arvixe's servers. They were offline for at least an hour and I had to start working on something else until they were back up.

How should I approach a Sharepoint 2010 development project coming from WebForms and MVC?

I have a good amount of knowledge in the ASP.NET Webforms and MVC worlds. Shortly I will be tasked with implementing custom web applications with Sharepoint. I have great flexibility with this project (i.e - I can use custom web apps outside of Sharepoint if that's possible) but like most projects the most limiting factor I have to deal with is time.
Here are some questions that come to mind:
Can I easily integrate a custom MVC project into Sharepoint 2010? What are the pros and cons if I can?
Same as #1 only with Webforms.
If #1 and #2 are not viable solutions, can I easily create custom web applications within the Sharepoint world? What will the learning curve be with my background?
I understand developers can now use Windows 7 to deliver Sharepoint 2010 solutions. It looks like I can use a trial of Microsoft Sharepoint Foundations 2010. If that's correct, are there any development differences or gotchas I need to be aware of before digging into the Foundation version? I don't want to get up to speed on Foundation and then find out that the Server edition (the version that will be deployed) is vastly different.
Thanks!
SharePoint is based on webforms - it is relatively easy to add custom user controls and web parts, though if you want to use SharePoint data in a completely custom web app, especially mvc you will probably need to host it seperately - you can access everything you need through the SharePoint API, but it makes the deployment a lot more complicated.
The workarounds to get webforms mvc running in the SharePoint web app tend to involve stuff that would never get past corporate infrastructure people, but I've been getting good results with precompiled razor views set up based on http://razorengine.codeplex.com/ - my version that produces code which can be included in a SharePoint project is at https://github.com/tqc/RazorEngine
In the 2007 version there were significant architectural differences between WSS and MOSS. With 2010 there aren't as many differences, so you should be ok, but it would still be better to develop on the same version you are deploying to - download a trial of Standard or one of the demo VMs - If you do a lot of .net development, chances are you already have an appropriate dev license.
What are you trying to accomplish? Are you connecting your MVC site to SharePoint or are you building something "MVC" on top of the SharePoint server?
In any case, there is an MVC SharePoint project on Codeplex here http://sharepointmvc.codeplex.com/
Here is an article on the subject http://blogs.msdn.com/tom/archive/2009/03/17/asp-net-mvc-and-sharepoint.aspx
I havent touched it, and it seems a bit abandoned to me, but it might get you along.
Check out it outlines one method of running MVC with SharePoint
Generally, SharePoint will simplify many user-oriented requirements you may have - such as authentication, permissions control and personalised areas (with MySites).
If you go with SharePoint, you almost have to build your product for SharePoint Foundation so that you can keep your customers' total costs low (SharePoint CALs, SQL Server, hardware, etc). You'll want to build friendly user interfaces for managing permission, allowing your users to create their own pages, and other provisioning tasks -- or provide rock-solid documentation on how to do it out of the box with SharePoint. With SharePoint, you should use features and Web Parts to deploy your code either way , whether SaaS or on-premise. That will make it easier to deploy and upgrade.

advice on working on remote asp.net applications

I'm a (relatively new) developer using asp.net with VB.NET. Currently all my applications are developed on my PC and then are built and moved onto the web server. I'm going to be working remotely for 3 months in which time I'll be connecting to the company network via VPN. What is the best way to access my projects? I need to have the projects stored on the company network so that others can access them too. So simply copying the projects to my laptop, working on them, then copying them back won't suffice. I tried to just open the projects off of the network share but am getting application trust problems.
I'm just wondering what other developers do in this situation?
You will need some kind of source control solution, probably best if it was web based. Something like git which is very popular maybe useful for you.
WinMerge is pretty simple to use.

How could I integrate Arachnode.Net web crawler with some of goodness in Searcharoo for a Search Engine Interface?

I am currently 70% of finishing my portal in asp.net using C# for a local government agency. The portal is quite big with integration with SQL Server 2008 Analysis, Reporting, and Integration services. Plus, I had successfully deployed and configured it into Windows Server 2008 under Active Directory environment. The next requirement is going to provide a search capability to the portal. The search engine must be able to search contents from the analysis and reporting server as well. For the start, I have made some research on the search engine using Microsoft.Net technology. I am very impressed with the works of experts for Arachnode.Net and Searcharoo. For the time being there is a sample for Arachnode.net to combine with Lucene.Net as complete search engine for asp.net. However, Searcharoo seems better than Lucene.Net for many reasons (in my opinion). Could anyone help me guide briefly on how could I integrate Arachnode.Net and Searcharoo? Thanks.
You can find help for setting up Searcharoo spider at my blog post titled
How do you use Searcharoo library to spider a ASP.NET MVC website

Web Reporting Solution without Reporting Services?

I'm working on a solution to create reports in a web application but don't have the budget or personnel to manage a SQL Server Reporting Services install. What alternatives do I have, given these constraints?
I'm using ASP.NET 3.5 on SQL Server 2005.
You could use SSRS but in local mode not server mode. From my understanding you don't need SSRS when reports are rendered with this method. You will also be required to write more code to support the reports.
Other options then include looking at other reporting packages out there. Crystal Reports is one possibility but if you can't manage SSRS, I'm guessing CR would not be a possibility.
Anyways here's some links for SSRS in local mode:
http://www.vbdotnetheaven.com/UploadFile/justinsaraceno/Main11132006012727AM/Main.aspx
http://aspalliance.com/1318_Using_Local_Microsoft_SQL_Server_Reporting_Services_in_ASPNET
Perhaps you can use Jasper: http://jasperforge.org/
I believe there is a jTDS driver to connect to sql server.
I have no clue if this will work or is supported, just an idea.
HTML is a reporting layer. Do you need another one?

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