What Are the Visual Studio 2005 Report Tools?


Visual Studio 2005 leverages the tools, designers, and RDL tuning created for the first SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services tools suite that was hosted by Visual Studio 2003. The new tools include:

  • The Report Designer: This tool is launched when you navigate to a report (RDLC) file in your project. It's basically the "layout" tab in the Reporting Services 2000 Report Designer. No, this designer does not have a "preview" or "data" tab. Those aspects of report development are handled differently.

  • The Report Items toolbox: This includes the same toolbox items as the BIDS Report Designer. These items include a TextBox (label), Line, Table, Matrix, Rectangle, List, Image, Subreport, and Chart. Yes, these items are programmed in the same way as the BIDS Report Designer toolbox items. No, this toolbox is not extensible by third-party control vendors like the BIDS toolbox because the controls are implemented to execute on the Reporting Services server, not on the client.

  • The ReportViewer control: The ReportViewer is used to host and render the RDLC report in a Windows Form or on an ASP.NET page at runtime, or render an RDL report (in "remote" mode). Basically, this control leverages the development Microsoft did creating the BIDS Report Designer's "preview" window and the Report Manager's rendering window. Its job is to read through the data provided by the report query, apply any report parameters, and interpret the RDLC file to render the report in the space provided on the Windows Form or ASP.NET page using Windows GDI or HTML. It renders any report headers, footers, and grouping, and executes any expressions or code-behind logic. It also maintains totals, subtotals, and data groupings, including managing data and page breaks as neededwell, at least, it tries to handle page breaks. I'm of the opinion that this code is "broken." You'll find that you spend an inordinate amount of time reworking layouts as you move from one rendering format to another.

As you can see, the Visual Studio 2005 report tools are a lot fewer than the BIDS tools. You'll be responsible for handling all data access work and a lot more, as you'll soon see. This means you'll need to write code and build UI elements to:

  • Capture local report and query parameters, including all data queries or other logic to populate parameter pick lists

  • Build and instantiate the data access interfaces, Data Sources, and classes

  • Open and close the connections as needed

  • Run the report and pick-list queries in the sequences that make sense

  • Pass the rowset(s) to the ReportViewer

  • Get the ReportViewer to render the report

Yes, virtually all of these operations (and more) are executed automatically behind the scenes when you launch a BIDS report.




Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server(c) Best Practice Architectures and Examples
Hitchhikers Guide to Visual Studio and SQL Server: Best Practice Architectures and Examples, 7th Edition (Microsoft Windows Server System Series)
ISBN: 0321243625
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 227

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