In all of the examples I have seen it shows using the session to store the reportdocument object between postbacks. That means that clicking the page buttons fires a postback. Other reporting tools such as PDF, ActiveReports, and others do not have to do this. Is this a limitation of Crystal and a COM backend or is it just a common sample and not the only option?
How do you get paging to work without having to use session and do postbacks? AJAX, Javascript, converting to a PDF, etc. would all be possible ways to not require a postback.
My problem is that I am using SQL Server to store the session and the reportdocument object is not serializeable. I have been told I can buy Crystal Report Server for $5000 and this will work. But in reality I can buy other reporting tool for $500 or convert them to SQL Reporting and it will work as well. So I am trying to be reasonable and figure out what I need to do. That seems like a bit much to need a whole server application to serve the reports just to turn on paging for a couple of simple reports. I'm hoping there is a way to not use session to get paging to work.
I have consider pushing the report into viewstate and not session. But I would rather not push it into either. Is this a valid option?
What is the typical way to handle this sort of thing? Do you really have to push it into session to get the CrystalReportViewer control to page on an ASPX page. What other options are there?
Any suggestions, thoughts, or ideas would be very much appreciated. This is causing enough of a problem where the company is asking me to look at alternatives if we cannot solve this.
Best regards,
Jon