Migrating from (GrapeCity) Data Dynamics

[Aarsh]

We are giving serious thoughts for shifting to Telerik reports.

So friends please guide us get started.

I would like to know / if...

• Data Dynamics to Telerik Report Conversion utility is available

• Subreports are supported

• Export to Word, Excel , PDF and HTML

• Access to report life cycle just like asp.net page life cycle

• The degree of customization allowed for the Telerik reports if required

• Ifwe can set the date sets, data sources, parameter values programatically

• Does it support SQL reports ? (figures crossed)

• We can have subreports as a table row (please see the attached PNG file for clarification. Customer Order History and Customer

• Product History are the subreports. We are using this scenario basically.)

FYI: The report gets flourished by the stored procedure hence the end user needs to pass some parameters to the report, which in turn will be passed to stored procedure.

The parameter should support default values (programatically and manually), validation. Check-box list and date selector are heavily used parameters in our reports.

Thank you,
-Aarsh

[Aarsh]

Anyone ?

[IvanY]

Hello Aarsh,

As a best practice we can recommend you to first check our online documentation that will give you detailed information about the product as well as some samples. To explore further Telerik Reporting you can download a trial version from the official web site and get your hands on the tool. To speed up the process of learning you can check our online demos and check the videos on how to create these reports.

Up to your questions:

1. Telerik Reporting offers converters only for Active Reports, Crystal Reports and XtraReports. More information about the supported converters you can find here.
2. Subreports are fully supported - more info about them you can find in this SubReport help article.
3. All export formats listed by you are supported, including some more - the full list you can find in our Rendering Extensions help article.
4. We will need more information about your goals in order to advise you accordingly.
5. Again we will need more information about your goals. In general every report that you create inherits directly from Telerik.Reporting.Report. In the derived class you can implement any custom logic, but you have to know that this can be tricky in some cases and is advisable to first create a couple of reports using the designer and check out the code generated.
6. Every part of your report can be created or customized with code. Reports created with the designer can also be further customized easily with code. For more information you can check our Programmatic Control of Report help article and the related subarticles.
7. SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) are not supported as they are a different reporting solution. If that is not what you mean please elaborate.
8. Yes, subreports can be placed as a single line in a table. However there are better ways to achieve the same result, such as assigning the report itself a data source and with groups and textboxes to mimic the behaviour of a table.
9. More information about the report parameters you can find in the Report Parameters help article. In general your use cases are covered. However if some other needs arise you can always create a custom Parameters Area to use along with the Report Viewer itself.

Kind regards,
IvanY
the Telerik team

[Aarsh]

1-3, 6, 8, 9 : Thanks

4)

Is it possible if I wish to flourish another parameter using one and then generating report and then to perform some operations just after the report has been rendered and right before it has been displayed ? (Importance: High)


5)

    - Let us assume that we are printing some remarks/notes field in the report but the operator might want to modify them before it gets printed / exported - are such scenarios handled in Telerik reporting ? (Importance: Med)
    - If I need to overrule some funcitonality with mine (for example, let's say, printing) (Importance: Med)
    - Can we modify the tool bars and parameter pane stuff to match the exisitng theme ? (Importance: Med)
    - If sub report are used and they retunrn 0 record, is that left behind blank, or the next time takes place of it to maintain the formatting consistancy ? (Importance: High)

7)

I was just wondering if I can import rdlx files as they seemed to get saved in the XML kind a formatting

8)
Interesting,may I plaease have a demo report behinving as you expected ? (Importance: High)

[IvanY]

Hello Aarsh,

1. This scenario is not possible, but there exist events that might help you change the report layout dinamically, such as ItemDataBound and ItemDataBinding. Additionally you can use conditional formatting and/or bindings, but it all depeneds on what your current use case is.
2. Controlling directly the print output is not possible. What you can do is render the report to one of the export formats and edit the the ouputted document for example.
3. See 2.
4. Depending on the Report Viewer that you are using you can apply different styles to it - both Silverlight and WPF viewers support themes and custom styles (more info you can find for each Report Viewer in the Using Telerik Reporting in Applications). Additionally the ASP.NET Report Viewer can be customized using custom images and settting its SkinsPath and Skin properties.
5. By default if an item is empty it still takes the space, which is done in order to preserve the layout. However if that is not what you need you can always set the height of the subreport to the minimum and the CanGrow property to true (this is the default value) - in runtime the subreport will grow to its full size, but will not be noticed if there is no content. Additionally you can hide it using conditional formatting or bindings.
6. While rdlx files are xml files too the generated content is different from our trdx files and therefore displaying such reports is not possible (just like it is not possible other viewers to display our reports using the trdx file).
7. I have attached two reports with both subreport in a table and subreport in a detail section with textboxes that mimic a table (the output is the same).

Greetings,
IvanY
the Telerik team

[Aarsh]

Thank you so much for your response. But I think I could not explain one of my questions as I should:

basically, I want to update one of the hidden parameter upon certain control has lost focus. Actually, we are having a check-box group and we are supposed to forward the selection as comma separated string.

Like
[unchecked] Option 1
[checked]     Option 2
[unchecked] Option 3
[checked] Option 4
[unchecked] Option 5

then it should send "value2, value4" [ including quotes ]
and just "value2" [ including quotes ] if Option 4 is not checked.

Thanks in Advance,
-Aarsh

[Aarsh]

Any words ? Also http://www.telerik.com/community/forums/reporting/telerik-reporting/multiple-value-parameter.aspx#2321358.

Thanks in advance,
-Aarsh

[IvanY]

Hello Aarsh,

You can easily update the hidden parameter programmatically based on the client input. What you have to do is just collect the input, transform it to the proper format needed by the report (that step is optional) and pass it to your parameter. After that you can refresh the report in the Report Viewer programmatically or you can wait for additional input/event/something else.

In the Using Report Parameters programmatically help article you can find more information about how you can populate the parameters collection with values. 

Following this pattern you can completely substitute the default parameters area of Telerik Reporting with your own custom one if that is needed.

I hope that helps.

Greetings,
IvanY
the Telerik team