FastReport.OpenSource + VB.net

I am developing an application to catalogue a large collection of family photos and videos; well north of 10K items. To do this, I'm using the only programming language I know well enough for the purpose, namely VB.net (VS 2026) and storing the data in SQLite. Because this is a personal project, I'm using FastReport OpenSource (FROS) to try building the reports portion of the application. I would use Microsoft's reporting tools if they didn't come with attached headaches. That's not to say that FROS isn't free of headaches either, which leads me to this request for assistance:

I've been banging my head against the wall trying to create a report programmatically. Unfortunately, aside from one blog post, https://www.fast-report.com/blogs/cr...-report-vb-net, there is absolutely no documentation or example out there for VB.net developers to refer to! The post includes an example, but it does not work because it ends with report.Show(). It produces an error that says .Show() is not a member. I subsequently found another, undocumented example that looks like it was transcribed from C# that ends with ends with report.Prepare(). While it works better that the one from the blog post, it fails with "FastReport.Utils.CompilerException: '(0,0): Error CS0006: Metadata file 'Microsoft.CSharp' could not be found'".

At this point I have NO idea what I'm doing wrong or what I'm missing. I installed the following FROS modules via NuGet (all 2026.2.0): FastReport.Compat, FastReport.OpenSource, and FastReport.Data.Sqlite. I've created a .FRX file and an .XML file to try generating the report, in addition to the hardcode. NOTHING WORKS!!!!

Sadly, there is no other report generation tool out there (that I'm aware of), which will allow me to do this without bankrupting me! Is there anyone reading these forums who can help me out please?