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Chelsea Devereaux for MESCIUS inc.

Posted on • Originally published at hackernoon.com

The Top 5 Angular Reporting Tools

Calling all Angular developers! You're building a web application for an enterprise that needs interactive dashboards or reporting capabilities. Whether it is to showcase sales trends, forecast financials, monitor inventory, track customer inquiries, or visualize any other business function, you're now faced with two options:

  1. Manually code these visual components into your software.
  2. Adopt a library of premade reporting components into the Angular framework.

Personally, the latter sounds more appealing. Angular reporting tools let you seamlessly integrate charts, tables, and other data visualization components directly into Angular-built apps. It saves you hours of coding efforts and enhances your apps by giving users more accessible, understandable information.

While it's a significant efficiency hack, not all Angular reporting tools are equal. Some may offer deeper integrations or broader report visual options, while others are more intuitive for beginner developers. With the abundance of variables to consider, we're here to cut through the noise!

Below are our picks for the top Angular reporting tools.

Essential Attributes of Angular Reporting Tools

For an apples-to-apples comparison, we evaluated each Angular reporting component library based on how much support it can provide developers. Our criteria are as follows:

  • Depth of integration: How seamless is adding report components into Angular apps? Can you do so without (or with minimal) additional coding or workarounds? Is there a lot of extra configuration work required to connect data sources to your reports or add APIs?
  • Report customization and flexibility: Can you customize your Angular report components to meet application and branding needs? Does it offer flexibility for both simple data visualizations and complex interactive reports?
  • Component library size and performance: How many types of reporting charts and data visualizations can you add to your web apps? Is it performance-optimized to handle large data sets without slowing down the entire app or compromising other components?
  • Developer experiences and product resources: Is the component library easy to use while navigating and exporting reporting elements? What online resources, tutorials, and product documentation are available to developers for support? Does the provider offer templates for developers to speed up report delivery?

ActiveReportsJS

ARJS

Notable Features:

  • Data binding options for REST API, OData, or a GraphQL endpoint.
  • Rich component selection with dozens of controls and charting tools to create the perfect report for any application.
  • Standalone report designer, which provides a seamless way to connect to data sources, build data sets, define interactive parameters, and embed subreports across different platforms.
  • The perfect report view gives a snapshot and dropdown for end users to view, export, and print their reports in one click.

Pros:

  • Developer-friendly tool: APIs are easy to add, and the designer tools are known for their intuitive design and supporting templates.
  • No server dependencies: developers can integrate report designer tools into applications without worrying about back-end infrastructure.
  • Supports numerous reporting types, including printable, analytical, interactive, and fixed-layout options.
  • Provider offers a wide range of documentation and tutorials.

Cons:

  • Certain premium features may require additional products for a higher price.
  • More advanced features often come with a decent learning curve, particularly if you're new to using the Angular framework.

Summary

ActiveReportsJS is arguably the most flexible option on this list. It offers an endless component library of reporting types, templates, and styles for any brand's needs. If you rely on strong, visually appealing reports to make key decisions, you can look to ActiveReportsJS as a great resource.

Thanks to its ease of use and ability to quickly set up APIs, teams can expedite their entire coding process and avoid tedious workarounds.

Stimulsoft Report.JS

Stimulsoft

Notable Features:

  • Flexible report viewer and designer tool that lets you customize web app interfaces and reports for specific brand or design needs.
  • Export add-ins where users can download reports as PDFs, Word, or Excel documents.
  • Vast data sourcing options and embeddable report designer where you can connect data via JSON, Excel, REST API, SQL, and OData.
  • Supports stagnant and interactive reporting for different data representation needs.

Pros:

  • Relatively cost-friendly: starts at $799.95 per developer, with pricing discounts for longer subscriptions.
  • Deep integration that works without any server dependencies; you don't need to worry about managing server maintenance or configurations to use the tools.
  • A broad range of report customization is available and comes with plenty of templates and styles.

Cons:

  • Application performance can be unreliable or lag when dealing with larger data sets.
  • A decent learning curve is required, particularly for report components demanding complex APIs.
  • While there's solid documentation for developers, there's a limited community reach compared to more extensive tools.

Summary

Stimulsoft Reports.JS is one of the best-value purchases on this list. It works well for apps that require interactive data to analyze trends or performance, making it ideal for financial and banking industry app developers. We also appreciate its ability to speed up development cycles with its depth of integration and zero server dependencies by developers.

Jsreport

Jsreport

Notable Features:

  • Report output formats via PDF, Excel, Docs, HTML, and CSV.
  • Built-in report scheduling and email functionality.
  • Data sourcing is available from JSON, RESTful services, and many other APIs.
  • Application extensions through custom scripts and pre-built plugins.

Pros:

  • Inexpensive option, free plan available, and paid plans starting at just $29.95 per month.
  • Known for its user-friendliness while designing web app reports.
  • Comes with a strong integration that handles most of the back-end technologies and servers; it lets you focus exclusively on adding Angular reporting components.

Cons:

  • Struggles to handle large and complex reports; can slow down the entire app.
  • The Gold plan gets expensive at $299.95 per month ($3,599 per year).
  • Relatively limited number of visual components available to developers compared to competitors.

Summary

Jsreport is an excellent option for individuals or small teams looking for a cost-friendly Angular reporting tool. While it may not handle massive, complicated datasets as well as others, certain apps may only need simple reporting capabilities for which a lean, easy-to-use library, like Jsreport, would come in handy.

Jsreports

Jsreports

Notable Features:

  • Designer component for creating report templates, defining report elements, and then dragging and dropping them into documents.
  • Built-in scheduling to auto-generate and email new reports to users.
  • High customization for user access controls; lets you set granular rules for who can access what information.
  • Report generation via RESTful API supporting PDF and HTML.

Pros:

  • A lightweight option that ensures app performance through fast data processing.
  • A solid amount of documentation is available for developers to learn and overcome hurdles.
  • Easy to integrate Angular report components into web apps; it doesn't require excessive amounts of time using the drag-and-drop functionality.

Cons:

  • Lacks advanced features for more complex reporting needs.
  • Relatively limited customization options and built-in design functions compared to other Angular reporting tools.
  • Very expensive, costing $7,990 per year for three developers.

Summary

Jsreports can offer a lot of value and report customization if you're willing to pay the price. We recommend this tool to tech startups or companies that build web applications as a service since it gives you increased control over your app components and how users can interact with them.

Jsreports can generally streamline development time from months to a few weeks, as learning and incorporating Angular components doesn’t require as much time.

Bold Reports

Bold Reports

Notable Features:

  • Supports interactive and dashboard reporting in web apps.
  • API capabilities to embed reports in applications and export via PDF, Excel, CSV, Word, PowerPoint, XML, and HTML formats.
  • White-label options where you can easily blend your branding within web apps and their reports.

Pros:

  • Massive range of learning and support resources for developers.
  • Excellent integration for delivering reports in newer web applications; premade templates offer intuitive, modern-looking designs.
  • Adding and designing report components is relatively easy to do compared to other products.

Cons:

  • Licensing costs are more expensive, starting at $495 per month ($5,940 annually) for one developer; you must also pay more for managed hosting options by the provider.
  • Limited range of report flexibility compared to competitors.
  • More advanced charting options aren't available.

Summary

Because of its focus on dashboards, Bold Reports can best serve industry apps that need real-time information and collaborative features, like those for healthcare or manufacturing. We also like how its premade charts offer intuitive, simple-looking designs that blend well with modern web apps. One major downside is price, which may prove too costly for smaller teams to leverage this option.

Telerik Reports

Telerik

Notable Features:

  • Embedded reporting that lets users easily convert data to reports without coding requirements.
  • Flexible designer with themes and style options to create dashboards and reports for any app design or branding need.
  • OLAP Engine and data binding for quick data aggregating, filtering, and formatting.
  • Export formats via PDF, Excel, HTML, Word, PowerPoint, and many more.

Pros:

  • Performance-optimized to handle large, complex data sets without compromising app speed.
  • Abundance of detailed documentation and support available to developers.
  • Deep integration with the Angular framework; adding and editing components doesn't require many workarounds.

Cons:

  • Product is more expensive, starting at $799 up to $1,699 for more advanced Angular features.
  • Apps that need multiple reports often come with a steeper learning curve during setup.
  • High dependency on the provider ecosystem; getting the most from its component library often requires you to subscribe to other Telerik products.

Summary

If you already love what Telerik (as a company) offers, Telerik Reports might be ideal for your Angular development team. It’s a solid choice for enterprise-level apps where users must analyze massive data sets in their reports. It's also highly flexible with its chart customization and optional functionality for displaying real-time metrics, making it useful for any industry.

DevExpress Reports

DevExpress

Notable Features:

  • Offers components for interactive reporting capabilities in apps.
  • Data sourcing is available from SQL, Excel, Oracle, Google Big Query, SAP HANA, JSON, and many more.
  • Report viewer controls to add templates and components natively into a web app.
  • Pixel-perfecting rendering where you can execute high precision in reports to meet the app's exact needs.

Pros:

  • Can handle large data sets from various sources without hindering application performance.
  • Reports are highly customizable and come with templates and styles to easily match documents and dashboards to the app design.
  • Extensive range of documentation, code examples, demos, training, and other resources available for developers to maximize their experience.

Cons:

  • Expensive product that starts at $1,999.99 per developer.
  • Labor intensive during initial configuration stages.
  • Rich feature set makes learning how to navigate the component library somewhat tricky.

Summary

DevExpress Reports is another tool that can help larger Angular teams streamline their app development cycle. Adding report components into the interface is fairly simple, making DevExpress ideal for apps that require high-volume reporting. Additional noteworthy features include its customization, complete data sourcing, and performance-optimized system, providing plenty of reporting flexibility.

Conclusion

While each Angular reporting tool might be best for specific use cases, ActiveReportsJS stands out with its range of customization options for both stagnant and interactive reporting. It's also one of the more intuitive products that can save developers hundreds of hours trying to connect APIs or code chart components into their apps manually. Plus, because of its flexibility, this component library can benefit any industry.

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