Binding to Business Object

[Brad Perniciaro]

I'm a bit confused about how to bind my report to a business object.  I've been able to get my object into the 'DataSource' property of my report, but I would think that at this point I'd have to specify the method which is responsible for populating the DataSource.  However, I'm not sure where to specify this method?  My business object is listed below, it is relatively simple and I'm currently just creating some debug objects in a method that will eventually pull from the database:

Imports System
Imports System.Data
Imports System.Configuration
Imports System.Web
Imports System.Collections
Imports System.Collections.Generic
Imports Triton.TCNext.EntityLayer

Public Class TransactionType_BAL
  Inherits List(Of TransactionType_BAL)

  Sub New(ByVal id As Integer, ByVal name As String, ByVal description As String)
    Me.ID = id
    Me.Name = name
    Me.Description = description
  End Sub

  Sub New()

  End Sub

  Private _id As Integer = 0
  Public Property ID()
    Get
      Return _id
    End Get
    Set(ByVal value)
      _id = value
    End Set
  End Property

  Private _name As String = 0
  Public Property Name()
    Get
      Return _name
    End Get
    Set(ByVal value)
      _name = value
    End Set
  End Property

  Private _description As String = 0
  Public Property Description()
    Get
      Return _description
    End Get
    Set(ByVal value)
      _description = value
    End Set
  End Property


  Public Shared Function GetTransactionTypes() As List(Of TransactionType_BAL)
    Dim transactionType1 As TransactionType_BAL = New TransactionType_BAL(1, "Checking Withdrawal", String.Empty)
    Dim transactionType2 As TransactionType_BAL = New TransactionType_BAL(2, "Savings Withdrawal", String.Empty)
    Dim transactionType3 As TransactionType_BAL = New TransactionType_BAL(3, "Credit Withdrawal", String.Empty)
    Dim transactionTypes As List(Of TransactionType_BAL) = New List(Of TransactionType_BAL)
    transactionTypes.Add(transactionType1)
    transactionTypes.Add(transactionType2)
    transactionTypes.Add(transactionType3)
    Return transactionTypes
  End Function

  Private Shared Function GetTransactionTypeFromTransactionTypeEntity(ByVal transactionType As TransactionTypeEntity) As TransactionType_BAL
    If transactionType Is Nothing Then
      Return Nothing
    Else
      Return New TransactionType_BAL(transactionType.ID, transactionType.Name, transactionType.Description)
    End If
  End Function


  Private Shared Function GetTransactionTypeListFromTransactionTypeEntityList(ByVal recordSet As List(Of TransactionTypeEntity)) As List(Of TransactionType_BAL)
    Dim transactionTypes As List(Of TransactionType_BAL) = New List(Of TransactionType_BAL)
    Dim record As TransactionTypeEntity
    For Each record In recordSet
      transactionTypes.Add(GetTransactionTypeFromTransactionTypeEntity(record))
    Next
    Return transactionTypes
  End Function




End Class

My initial approach was to create a BLL, a DLL, entity objects to pass between the two, then implement stored procedures in the DB.  My thought was that I would have a method in my BLL that would populate a collection of objects then pass this collection to the report for display.  To populate the collection, the BLL would call a method in the DAL which in turn would populate an entity object (or collection of entity objects) based on the data retrieved through the utilization of stored procedures in the database.  The BLL would then convert these entity objects to business objects which could be passed to the report in a strongly-typed collection.

Does this approach seem feasible?  Is this overkill? 

[Svetoslav]

Hello Brad Perniciaro,

It is up to you what object to use as a data source for the report and how to fill it with data. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that the data should be available before you pass the report to the report viewer (or in case you render the report programmatically before calling the ReportProcessor.Render() method). The best place to do this is in your report's constructor right after the InitializeComponent() method. For example you can examine the code of any of the sample reports. Here is the constructor of the LetterReport:

Partial Public Class LetterReport
    Inherits Report

    Public Sub New()
        ''' <summary>
        ''' Required for Telerik Reporting Designer support
        ''' </summary>
        InitializeComponent()


        'TODO: This line of code loads data into the 'LetterReportDataSet.LetterReportDataSetTable' table. You can move, or remove it, as needed.
        Me.LetterReportDataSetTableAdapter1.Fill(Me.LetterReportDataSet.LetterReportDataSetTable)
    End Sub
End Class

Best wishes,
Svetoslav
the Telerik team

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[Bhushan]

Hello ,
How to bind business object to the report , I want to pass the parameters to filter the data(List ) from database. is it necessary to take any wizard for it and configure ?.
where to write the code 1) Report.VB (after initialization) 2) Report Viewer page (.aspx )....