DevExpress Reporting Suite is a product from DevExpress with tools for fast, easy, and convenient work with reports and documents. The primary developers' goal was to give web reporting a large and flexible set of tools for working with reports in all versions of this software for different platforms. The software is available for Windows, so that we will tell you more about it.

What is this program?

DevExpress Reporting Suite is a powerful solution for generating various reports for Windows and other platforms. This product works with familiar data sources and services, such as MS SQL Server, MS Access, Oracle, DB2, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Sybase, Firebird, Interbase, XML, or via API. DevExpress Reporting guarantees data availability from any resource via Visual Studio .NET data objects and allows reporting in XML or any other format with support for IList, IList[t], and IEnumerable[t] interfaces.

This software also has several components that will be described below.

HTML5/JS Document Viewer

HTML5/JS Document Viewer is a new, modern, and rapid reporting component of the DevExpress Reporting Suite. The ability to start working with a document immediately after an element is displayed on a page is one of the primary advantages of the program. This is possible due to asynchronous report loading that shows the loaded part of a document. The progress can be seen in the panel from the bottom left corner, so you can stop the loading if necessary.

A pleasant appearance is one of the program's priorities when creating new components because users always appreciate it. There was a difference from the desktop version earlier because the use of HTML tools made it impossible to achieve the same look of reports for displaying and printing. Due to the use of GDI+ tools for drawing elements, a report has a nice and clear appearance and looks how it will be printed and exported.

ASP.NET & MVC Report Designer

ASP.NET & MVC Report Designer is another valuable component of this software. It contains various useful functions and features. The built-in Script Editor, one of the new enhancements for ASP.NET & MVC Report Designer, makes editing reports easier. Due to the Script Editor, you can add processing of various events and scripts from the editor in one of the following languages: C#, Visual Basic .NET, or JScript .NET.

The Script Editor supports code highlighting and autocompletion for the selected language, templates for events, and code checks with descriptions of occurring errors. Data Source Wizard is one of the tools designed to make working with data and its queries easier. It makes it easy to create complex SQL queries manually and with the built-in visual query builder.

The Filter Editor is another tool to simplify working with data. Instead of manually entering strings with data filtering conditions, they can be configured in the Filter Editor. Customization of formatting rules is designed for a more flexible setting of reports and their appearances. You can create and delete rules using the menu buttons. You can also use them to navigate the already-created rules and easily edit them.

Interface and navigation

The DevExpress Reporting Suite interface consists of a menu, navigation, search, and export. The menu performs all the standard actions when viewing a report, such as navigating through pages, zooming, exporting, printing settings, searching, and enabling the multi-page view of the document. The multi-page mode is convenient for covering several pages at a single glance.

There is also a search within a report to find the desired text with the specified parameters (for example, searching for an entire word, with or without capitals) and navigate through the results of this search.

The Quick Access Toolbar with flexible export settings allows you to set export parameters for each required format. Navigating a report can be done using the "Forward/Backward" arrows and page selection or with a document tree.