Major Reporting Problems

[Brian Chavez]

Hello,

This is the first time I've been using Telerik Reporting in a major project and I've been having some major problems.

At first, the development experience with TR was really nice up until the point where the VS designer quit working.  After the designer quit working, everything has been downhill since....

ISSUE 1:
When I first start Visual Studio, and double click on a relatively detailed report, I get the following:

	One or more errors encountered while loading the designer. The errors are listed below. Some errors can be fixed by rebuilding your project, while others may require code changes.
The designer could not be shown for this file because none of the classes within it can be designed. The designer inspected the following classes in the file: PropertyListing --- The base class 'Telerik.Reporting.Report' cannot be designed. Hide
at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomDesignerLoader.EnsureDocument(IDesignerSerializationManager manager) at System.ComponentModel.Design.Serialization.CodeDomDesignerLoader.PerformLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager manager) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomDesignerLoader.PerformLoad(IDesignerSerializationManager serializationManager) at Microsoft.VisualStudio.Design.Serialization.CodeDom.VSCodeDomDesignerLoader.DeferredLoadHandler.Microsoft.VisualStudio.TextManager.Interop.IVsTextBufferDataEvents.OnLoadCompleted(Int32 fReload)

After 3 or 4 attempts closing and opening the report, the report will finally load.  Very annoying.  I'm not sure why this happens.

ISSUE 2: Support for domain objects in an IList<T> tend to be flaky.  For example, if I set the DataSource property in the designer, and load sample data (similar to how Car/Cars List<Car> example, when trying to setup the Filters property, I get a Null Reference Exception from the designer.

ISSUE 3: Debugging/Troubleshooting the Reporting Framework is hard because of the signed reporting assemblies.  I was able to build the Telerik Reporting from the source code and attempted to replace the "Release" version with my own "Debug" version to further troubleshoot the issue, but it seems that any pictures I've added to reports while using the "Release" versions get serialized and signed with the "Release" serialized object signatures in the report RESX resource file, so replacing the run time assemblies with "Debug" versions doesn't exactly work.

I've tried to setup a small demo project to demonstrate the problem but I'm not able to reproduce the issues.  Anyone else getting designer problems?  Any suggestions on debugging this?  I've spent about 2 days already wasted trying to solve these issues looking for a final "work flow" to work with these telerik reports.

Thanks,

[Brian Chavez]

Also, I get these errors quite often too:

http://www.directgames.net/temp/Image1.jpg

[Svetoslav]

Hello Brian Chavez,

In order to help you in the best possible way we need some more information regarding the issues you have experienced.

The 1st issue most probably occurs when Visual Studio fails to load the designer for a given component - in your case Telerik.Reporting.Report. The reasons may vary. If you have upgraded to a later version of Telerik Reporting your project may still reference the older assemblies. You have mentioned that you are building Telerik Reporting on your own - this can lead to incorrect versions of the needed assemblies as well.

To fix the issue, please, verify that you have installed the latest version of Telerik Reporting correctly, and make sure you are using the right assemblies. For more information, please read Deploying Telerik Reporting on a Server.

Regarding the 2nd issue - from the information you have provided we cannot say what the exact reason for the NullReferenceException is. Please, send us the exception's stack trace and your report so we can examine the filter that causes this trouble.

In order to build and debug the Telerik Reporting engine you have to sign all assemblies with your own key and replace all references to point to the new assemblies. This is the only way .NET runtime loads your assemblies. The same applies to the RESX files too. Since you replace all assemblies you should change this everywhere.

Regarding the last issue. From the screen shot it is not obvious why this assembly cannot be loaded. Please use the assembly binding log viewer to examine the actual reason.

 
Sincerely yours,
Svetoslav
the Telerik team

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[Brian Chavez]

Hi Svetoslav,

Thank you for your reply.  After about another day of debugging, I found that the root cause of the problem was an invalid project reference causing the VS designer to choke.  Causing errors like:
------------
An unhandled exception of type 'System.ArgumentException' occurred in Unknown Module.

Additional information: The path is not of a legal form.
------------

The way I found the bad reference was to load FileMon and setup an include "devenv*.dll" filter and highlight "*NOT FOUND*".  After reviewing the FileMon log, I found Visual Studio was trying to load a bad project assembly of mine.  After I fixed the bad assembly reference, everything started magaically working again.

Many thanks for your help and suggestions.  Finally back on track!

-Brian