Reporting Servers

In addition to the included Quick Reports, and the support for Crystal Reports, dbFront also makes it easy to connect to external reporting servers.  There is an incredible wealth of powerful reporting options available ranging from free to full enterprise-grade.

All of these Reporting Servers will require some level of setup but many are well worth the effort.  If you are adding dbFront to an existing environment it is very likely that a Report server is already installed and available.

If you need help integrating dbFront with your existing reporting server then please log an issue.

Reporting Server Integration

External Reporting Server hosted reports are called from OpenURL action buttons added to the table.  In addition to the standard OpenURL button, you would also set up Prompt Fields to prompt for any additional information required by the report.

SQL Server

For SQL Server, a default and popular option is Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).   SSRS also works with SQL Server Express.  

For more details see: msdn.microsoft.com - Reporting Services

If SSRS is not an option you can see the topic below for other options.

MySql & Oracle

For all other databases or if you are looking for an alternative to SSRS then you can look at the following links:

Two good listings of reporting tools with some options to compare can be found at:

• Alternativeto.net - sql-server-reporting-services-ssrs
• Capterra.com - reporting-software

One feature you should look for is the ability to link directly to a specific report including passing specific report parameters.

Once you have set up a report server, it is a simple matter to link directly to the server from dbFront.  For instructions on linking to external resources see: Action Buttons.

For a complete listing of the reporting options in dbFront you can see: Reporting