dynamic reports (adding and removing of the fields by the users) in .NET

I have a .NET (C#) reporting application that retrieves data from database, transforms it and generates reports.

some of those reports involve complex business logic processing, splitting and grouping of the data and some reports require complex formatting (several worksheets in excel).

reports are generated in various formats including text files, excel sheets etc. there is a new requirement开发者_开发问答 to give the ability to end users to make changes to the reports themselves without involving the developer (they should be able to make simple changes, but obviously any computed fields will have to be added by the developer) and also to make the design generic so that new reports can be added easily without having to build it from scratch.

The generic design should support the simple reports at least. just wondering if there is a tool that already supports these features?

can I use SQL Server reporting services for this?

Can SQL Server reporting services be used to bind the data to object collection rather than a dataset from a stored procedure? or is any other tool that supports my requirement? it should also support providing the ability to end users to make changes to the report themselves (or build even new reports if possible). this is an important requirement.

if I have to build this on my own is there any design pattern I can use for this?

In regards to Sql Server Reporting services, yes, it supports everything you need except for the custom object collection data source. This link has a list of all Data Sources supported by SSRS.

If the reports are to consume data from an RDBMS such as SQL Server, Oracle, etc, I don't see this as big deal. Most likely you'll be able to produce any output in the way you need it either through queries or stored procedures.

EDIT

Forgot to mention that SSRS has a very rich API that allows you to programmatically discover report parameters, pass them to the report and execute it. I am starting to use COGNOS and SSRS, at least on the surface, compares very well to it. But again, I'm just starting with COGNOS so I can't really say much about advanced features of the product.

ActiveReports is a datasource-agnostic reporting tool that is very feature filled. It does include the ability to embed and customize the report designer in your own application as well which would allow you to give your users some report editing capabilities.

you should definitely have a look into List & Label too. It works with every datasource ever and the end user designer is very advanced and simple to use. Upcoming version 17 got some improvements. We are working since a long time with that tool and we have always been satisfied with the results (and our clients, too ;-)