>"The one feature we like in WSS that haven't had luck finding elsewhere, is online datasheet reporting where you can define columns, views, and sorting."
Do you mean something like Tableau/QlikView/Pentaho/PowerBI?
Those looks much more in-depth than we are looking for. Sharepoint datasheets lets you create, manage, and view datasets completely inside sharepoint. An end user, for instance, could create dataset of (for instance) company inventory. They can add custom columns with datatype, like inventory count, cost, status, condition, date purchased, etc. They can then create views to filter/sort/group data and display this in different places in a workspace. Data is entered and manage in sharepoint. Has lots of handy uses and you could train non-technical users with it. Replaced lots of excel spreadsheets.
Does a tool like Power BI Desktop not meet your needs? This video gives a quick overview of putting together a report and publishing it to a PowerBI reporting portal: