Anyone use EntitySpaces with Telerik Reporting?

[rbourque]

We have an internal application that uses EntitySpaces everywhere and we are currently implementing Telerik Reports as it's report engine.

We started using SqlDataSource and rewriting all the queries in ordinary textual SQL which is taking a lot longer than the way we do it with EntitySpaces.

Has anyone used EntitySpaces collections as a datasource in code with Telerik Reports successfully?  
Any hints on the best way of doing it?  Code samples?

[Steve]

Hello Rbourque,

You have two options:

• The declarative data source components (such as SqlDataSource, CubeDataSource etc.) are implemented merely for your convenience - to spare you the necessity of writing down repetitive code for data retrieval in the most common scenarios. In case you want to feed the report with data from another data source that does not have 'out of the box' support, you can do that programmatically: create a class with a method that is responsible for retrieving the data and use the ObjectDataSource component to bind your report to the result of that method. The return types supported for data binding are all listed in the help section about the ObjectDataSource component. You can also find an example about binding to a custom business object with ObjectDataSource here: How to bind to a business object.
• Using the NeedDataSource event to connect data.

Regards,
Steve
the Telerik team

[DM]

Hello Rbourque,

Have you solved the issues relating  Telerik and EntitySpaces?
If so, could you provide a sample of your findings?
We too use telerik and ES in several projects and the time savings would be helpful
as you know.

DM

[rbourque]

Nope.  No luck.

We're sticking with EntitySpaces because it's the best DAL we've ever tested. 

We haven't had time to figure out how to make using Telerik Reporting easier with EntitySpaces, so we've been using the VS debugger to extract the raw SQL by setting a breakpoint at when the query element is created to give to the report designer, who pastes it in and sets up the Report Parameters for the software developers.

We're still doing everything twice, but the flexibility of Telerik Reports makes us want to stick with it.   

Regards,
Richard

[Isaac Weathers]

Hello Rbourque,

Are you still unable to use EntitySpaces?
Have a quick question for you, What type of Front End are you using for your Reports?
I am trying to use it in a DotNetNuke module and I keep throwing an "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" error.
Just wondered if you had seen that?

Thanks,
DM

[rbourque]

It's a Windows form app written in c# and no we haven't encountered that error at all.   We haven't run into any problems with either EntitySpaces or Telerik Reporting actually.

We created a method with a parameter so that can generate the report on the screen in a dialog, write it as a pdf, or create a MHTML file to use as the body of an email.   This way one method can run any report in any way we require in our app.

The only downside is writing sql statements in the Telerik gui.   EntitySpaces is SO much easier and faster, especially with any schema changes.   The Telerik designer is very good, but the Query Builder is TERRIBLE.   We usually write the queries in MySQL Query Browser and paste them instead.