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What does “reporting” mean in your application?
Start by separating the report user’s tasks. A dashboard user who filters, drills into charts, and explores trends has different needs from someone who prints a complete table, downloads a PDF, or sends a consistent invoice-like document. Those jobs may belong to different report types, even inside the same application.
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- Exploration and visual analysis: users interact with charts, filters, and visual summaries.
- Repeatable documents: users expect stable page layouts, headers, footers, page breaks, or complete long tables.
- User-authored reports: business users or customers need a designer, saved templates, or a way to define their own views.
Microsoft distinguishes interactive Power BI reports from paginated reports. Its guidance says, “Power BI paginated reports are optimized for printing, or PDF generation.” It recommends paginated reports when precise formatting, printable output, or grids that may overflow are important; interactive reports suit exploration and visual analysis. Microsoft Learn: When to use paginated reports in Power BI.
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#1 Best Overall
Which architecture is worth evaluating?
| Approach | Best fit to investigate | Trade-offs to validate |
|---|---|---|
| Build reporting features in the application | A limited set of known views or documents that closely match the product workflow and can be maintained by the team. | Your team owns query handling, layout and export behavior, authoring workflows, accessibility, security, upgrades, and ongoing fixes. |
| Use Power BI reports and paginated reports | Interactive analytics, formatted documents, or a mix of the two where Microsoft’s service and report types fit the data and distribution model. | Workspace permissions, licensing, data connectivity, gateways, embedding requirements, and service operations must fit the deployment. |
| Embed a commercial .NET reporting suite | An application that needs an integrated viewer or report designer, provided the product supports the target frameworks, data sources, outputs, and deployment model. | Evaluate developer and redistribution terms, deployment footprint, migration tooling, support, upgrades, and the work of integrating and operating the engine. |
The table is a shortlist, not a ranking. Neither a purchased tool nor a Microsoft service removes the need to design permissions, validate data, support report authors, and test production workloads. Custom code likewise has a continuing maintenance cost even when there is no separate reporting-engine license.
How should the report inventory shape the decision?
For interactive analysis
Use an interactive-report approach when the user’s primary task is to filter, compare, and explore data. Define which data model or sources the report will use, how users receive access, and whether the interactive experience belongs in a Power BI app, an embedded view, or a custom application screen. Do not assume a print-oriented report will provide the same analytical interaction.
For print-ready and exported documents
Prefer a paginated or document-oriented approach when output must retain deliberate page boundaries, fixed dimensions, repeated headers, or all rows in a long table. Microsoft documents paginated rendering to formats including Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF, CSV, XML, and MHTML. Check the output your users actually require; format availability alone does not prove that every report will render with the required fidelity.
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Rank #2
For user-authored reporting
If users need to create or modify reports, identify who will use the designer, what data they may access, how templates are saved and versioned, and how changes are reviewed. A viewer-only capability does not meet a self-service authoring requirement. Conversely, a designer adds training, permission, support, and governance work that may not be justified for a fixed set of reports.
What should teams do with existing SSRS or RDL reports?
Do not assume that moving reports means converting them all to the same destination. Microsoft describes two paths for existing SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Report Definition Language (RDL) reports: redevelop them as Power BI reports, or migrate them as paginated reports. Redevelopment can fit reports whose purpose is now interactive analysis; paginated migration preserves the print-oriented pattern. Decide report by report.
Before estimating the migration, inventory the parts that can drive effort or change behavior:
- Data sources, providers, stored procedures, credentials, and connection patterns.
- Parameters, expressions, custom code, and subreports.
- Page dimensions, layout rules, and required renderers or export formats.
- Consumers, access rules, schedules, and expectations for the resulting file.
Then migrate or rebuild a representative complex report. Compare its data, parameter behavior, layout, and required exports with the existing output before extrapolating the effort to the rest of the catalog. A successful simple report is not evidence that reports with custom logic or special renderers will transfer with equal fidelity.
What operational checks matter for Power BI?
Licensing and workspace access
Microsoft documents that Power BI Report Builder can be downloaded without a license. A free license permits publishing paginated reports to My Workspace; publishing to other workspaces requires Pro or Premium Per User (PPU), a contributor role in the workspace, and Build permission on the dataset. Treat this as a configuration to verify, not a universal entitlement: confirm current terms, tenant settings, and each author’s permissions before choosing a publishing workflow.
Data connectivity and retrieval
Map every report’s data sources and how the Power BI service will reach them. Microsoft’s guidance notes that on-premises sources require a data gateway for the service and calls attention to source type, data volume, latency, and redundant retrieval. Paginated report data sources and datasets can represent multiple sources; a paginated report does not require a Power BI semantic model as its data source and can use multiple semantic models. Confirm the actual provider, credentials, and network path for each source rather than assuming the report definition alone settles connectivity.
Rank #4
Embedding and performance
If reports will be embedded, account for token generation and semantic-model considerations in the application’s architecture. Test in the target execution environment with representative data volumes, concurrency, parameter patterns, report complexity, and export sizes. Microsoft’s service-versus-server guidance identifies execution environment and data volume as relevant considerations, but it does not establish a universal performance winner for an application’s workload.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What should you verify in an embedded .NET suite?
Commercial products such as DevExpress Reporting and Telerik Reporting are examples of embedded reporting options, not a complete market survey or an independent comparison. DevExpress documents ASP.NET Core reporting controls for designers and viewers, as well as support across multiple application environments. It also states that a valid license is required to distribute applications using its reporting controls; consult its current EULA for redistributable assemblies and terms. Telerik describes a reporting product for .NET web and desktop applications and lists support for ASP.NET Core, Blazor, MVC, Web Forms, Angular, React, Vue, WPF, and WinForms.
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Telerik’s product page listed a starting price of $699 annually per developer when reviewed on 2026-10-08. This is vendor-listed pricing at that time, not an independent market benchmark or a guaranteed quote; confirm current price and terms directly on the Telerik Reporting product page.
For any candidate, check the exact runtime and framework versions, viewer and designer capabilities, data connectivity, export fidelity, report formats, migration tools, deployment footprint, redistribution rights, upgrade policy, and support. A vendor’s stated feature list is a reason to test a capability, not proof that it meets a particular application’s requirements.
How can you make the decision without guessing?
- Classify the report jobs. Mark each report as exploratory, document-oriented, user-authored, or a combination. Identify required outputs and which rows or visual interactions users need.
- Inventory the current state. Record report count and complexity, RDL features, data sources, consumers, permissions, and existing delivery workflows.
- Write down architecture constraints. Specify the application framework and runtime, web or desktop clients, cloud or on-premises deployment, operating system, container needs, scale, and identity model.
- Shortlist only plausible approaches. For each one, check required authoring, data, embedding, export, and licensing capabilities. Reject candidates that cannot meet a hard requirement.
- Run a representative proof of concept. Use a complex report and realistic data, parameters, user permissions, concurrency, and exports. Include report creation or migration—not only viewing—if that is part of the requirement.
- Estimate the full ownership cost. Include implementation, licenses and redistribution, service capacity where relevant, upgrades, support, security reviews, author training, and the team’s time maintaining custom behavior.
- Set acceptance criteria before choosing. Define correctness, output fidelity, response and export targets, permission behavior, deployment repeatability, and who handles incidents and report changes.
This method leaves room for a hybrid: interactive reports for analysis, paginated reports for fixed-format documents, and custom application features where reporting products do not match the workflow. The missing application-specific facts—framework version, report inventory, scale, deployment, and budget—are exactly what a proof of concept and ownership estimate should resolve.
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