The product has excellent features and basically makes laying out a report as easy as developing a Windows form. It also has the "flexibility" to customize as much as necessary and we have pushed it. An important example of this is the ability to bypass its direct SQL handling and feed it a Datatable constructed programmatically. We are developing Web based reports using the PDF option at the rate of 1 or 2 reports per man day. The learning curve is a few days until full productivity, presuming that you are already an experienced ASP.NET programmer. There are a number of flukes and idiosyncracies such as the fact that the sample web program has to be run on the web server as the last part of the installation (undocumented). Moving source files from one project to another is also tricky due to the need for the .rpm file to be synchoronized with the .vb file. You have no choice but to cut and paste text. The saving grace is the support, which is the best we have ever experienced. The support technicians answer quickly and know the product thoroughly. It has never taken more than a few minutes to solve a problem and move on. It is pricey, but well worth it if you have serious development requirements. Assume that you will need the professional version (about $1200 per developer) for ASP.NET to get the report display capabilities.

It's a great product and easy to use, but unfortunately the price is forcing me to find an alternative. I've used it since before ActiveReport 1.0 was released, but as an independent software developer, I cannot justify the price unless one of my big clients foots the bill. $1200 for a single user license!!! I can get MSDN Universal for less than that! (I know it's not a replacement; it's just used for comparison).