>So, all you veterans, how does one best go about getting a few simple reports for his app? I need something the user can preview from the app, and send to his local printer. PDF would be great, but I'm not so sure just printing a HTML generated page would bo the right choice. I may also need it to be e-mailed to them, which I can handle sending the e-mail, as long as I am using a tool that generetes a file on the server that I cand send in the e-mail, then erase.
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A lot of our reports have actually just been plain HTML, usually rendered into a grid control and/or repeaters. It's nice because you can render in things like links to drill into the data and easily embed charting. I'm using Telerik's ASP.NET controls so the grid & treeview have some extra functionality like subtotals and groups that can be nice. You can also get fancy and include something like a checkbox or drop-down that lets the user select whether they want the standard report or export it to Excel (you write code which hides everything except the report data and changes the content type to an Excel doc so it automatically opens the report in Excel). Slick and it's only a few lines of code.

Of course, this doesn't work so great if you need more complex reports since it's not as simple as a real report writer, plus there isn't an easy way to create PDFs (although you might be able to get away with one of those HTML to PDF tools - never tried).

(for sending to Excel, you can do something like this):

Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-excel";
Response.Charset = "";

Beyond that I'd probably look at a third party tool like DevExpress XtraReports, or Telerik's Reporting tool, or almost any of the various reporting tools since they usually have both desktop and web interfaces. I haven't done anything with SQL Reporting Services so I don't have anything to add about that. I've used Crystal Reports, but to be honest at one point their licensing was so confusing (and they kept getting sold) that I've given up on them.