Before I worked almost exclusively on web forms, I worked quite a bit with Crystal Reports and found it clunky, but workable. When I tried to use it for web reporting, I found what I would expect to be about a page of HTML code would get about 20 pages of HTML generated. This led me to create my own HTML reports using one VB class called Html and 3 CSS classes called Report, Report1, and Invisible.

Here is the VB class:

 
Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic.ControlChars

Public Class Html

Public Shared BeginTablewBorder As String = 
"<table border=1 cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 width=100% class=eval1>" & CrLf
Public Shared BeginTable As String = 
"<table border=0 cellspacing=0 width=100% class=Report1>" & CrLf
Public Shared BeginPBTable As String = 
"<table border=0 cellspacing=0 width=100% class=Report>" & CrLf
Public Shared BeginRow As String = "<tr>" & CrLf
Public Shared EndCell As String = "</font></td>" & CrLf
Public Shared endRow As String = "</tr>" & CrLf
Public Shared endTable As String = "</table>" & CrLf
Public Shared br As String = "<br>" & CrLf

Public Shared Function BeginCellTxt
(ByVal size As Integer, ByVal span As Integer) As String
Dim result As String
result = "<td colspan=" & span.ToString & 
"><font family=arial;sanserif; size=" & size.ToString & ">" & CrLf
Return result
End Function

Public Shared Function BeginCellNum(ByVal size As Integer) As String
Dim result As String
result = "<td width=33% align=right><font family=arial;sanserif; size=" 
& size.ToString & ">" & CrLf
Return result
End Function

End Class

Here are the CSS classes:
.report
{
page-break-before: always;
margin-left: 60px;
}
.report1
{
margin-left: 60px;
}
.invisible
{
visibility: hidden;
}

Causing pseudo-code lines, in the web form, like this representing one row of a table:

 
For Each trust As TrustEntity In trusts
reportHtml &= Html.BeginRow & Html.BeginCellTxt & _
trust.Name.Trim & Html.EndCell & Html.BeginCellTxt & _
bankNumber.Trim & Html.EndCell & Html.BeginCellNum & _
total.ToString("c") & Html.EndCell & Html.BeginCellNum & _
  totalHours.ToString() + Html.EndCell + Html.EndRow : line += 1
  reportHtml &= Me.CheckPageBreak(False)
Next

Private Function CheckPageBreak(ByVal force As Boolean) As String
  Dim reportHtml As String
  If line >= pageLines Or force Then
   reportHtml &= Html.EndTable
   reportHtml &= Html.BeginPBTable
   line = 1
   page += 1
  End If
  Return reportHtml
End Function