What is DevExpress Reporting (XtraReport)?
Quick Answer
DevExpress Reporting is a banded reporting engine — you design an XtraReport in a visual designer with bands (report header, page header, detail, group header/footer, summary), bind it to a data source, add parameters and expressions, and export or print it (PDF, XLSX, DOCX). There's also an end-user report designer you can embed so users build their own reports.
It's a banded report engine. I design an XtraReport visually — the layout is organised into bands, and the key one is the Detail band, which repeats once per data row, with group and page bands around it. I bind it to a data source, which can be an EF query or a DataTable, add parameters that get prompted at run time for filtering, and calculated fields or summaries for totals. Then it renders to a preview control or the web report viewer, and exports to PDF, Excel or Word. There's also an embeddable end-user designer so business users can create their own report layouts.
- Bands control what repeats: the Detail band repeats per row; group bands repeat per group; page header/footer repeat per page.
- Data — bind to a collection, a DataTable, an EF query, or a SQL data source; sub-reports and detail-report bands handle master-detail.
- Parameters drive filtering and are prompted at run time; expressions and calculated fields handle derived values;
XRSummaryfor totals. - Hosting — WinForms/WPF preview control, an ASP.NET / Blazor Web Report Viewer, or headless export on the server.
- Common alternative in the .NET space: SSRS, QuestPDF (code-first), or Telerik Reporting.