A report author prepares a complete report—designs the layout of the report, defines data sources and datasets, uses the data regions and report items/controls to represent data.

ActiveReports provides report authors with a compiled tool—a standalone designer application for desktop applications. The predefined templates and simple drag-and-drop operations in the designer make report designing easy and quick, without using any code.

Another designer that allows end-users to create ad hoc reports in all major browsers is WebDesigner, available for the ASP.NET Core MVC application. The rich API enables UI customization based on the functionality you want the users to experience.

Developers may be report authors, who can in addition use the  Visual Studio Integrated Designer to create report layouts in Visual Studio and edit them at design time, visually and through code, script, or expressions, and prepare applications based on the Win or Web samples; for example, see the FlatEndUserDesigner sample.

The Report Authors section assumes that you are using the standalone designer application as the primary way to create your report.