I'm in the process of rebuilding from the ground up a stock control and point of sale system I wrote for a small chain of shops. They have a web-based back end that they input all their data in and some Windows-based touch-screen PCs that they use for point of sale, talking back to the website via API calls. The web side of the deal is WebForms and the desktop side is Windows Forms. Both back and front-end have a requirement for PDF output, in the back-end for reporting; on the desktop for the production of a receipt to hand to the customer at point of sale and for end of day reports and such, general paper stuff that comes out of a cash register. This used to be easy enough: I have RDLC files nicely designed, I fed them DataTable objects and called the Render method, out came my PDFs.
In an attempt to modernise myself, I'm rewriting the web backend in ASP.Net Core and I'm mulling between WPF and UWP for the point-of-sale till software. I note that WPF kinda supports the ReportViewer control via WindowsFormsHosts but that feels like a hack.
I don't have a clue about WPF and what it supports yet.
From my reading there's no support for RDLC in Core and I can't even move it onto the SQL server as I believe Azure SQL doesn't support Reporting Services. I've spent literally a couple of weeks armed with Google to try and find out how Microsoft thinks I should
do this now. There seem to be a few Javascript PDF options (no thanks) and maybe Stimulsoft Reporting. Or there's PowerBI which feels like a using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.
Can someone give me a hint here please? What's the current thinking on how people do this? I like the way that RDLC worked for both parts and I'd like to replicate that if possible.
Back in the day I used to do this sort of thing in VB4 with Crystal Reports. Someone get me back there :)
Thanks in advance...