I'm working on developing a best practices for reporting in our application.

Currently we're looking at SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) and Telerik (we use the client controls).

After looking at the documentation and installing the reporting tools I've come up against a wall at getting some basic data to display in a report.

Generally our app deals exclusively with entity objects.  On many pages we have a RadGrid in which we use the NeedDatasource event to call a static method on the type of the entity that the grid will display.  In this method we create a LINQ query and get back an IQueryable of entity objects which is then passed back to the datasource of the grid.  The dataset is set to the enumeration of the IQueryable.  We would like to continue doing this flow with reporting.

Our app currently moves the user through several wizard like screens of gathering information regarding what the report data will entail.  Once this data is collected a stored procedure is called that then gathers these "parameters" and does the calculations to produce a result set.  This result set basically contains some aggregate data that is brought together from various places in the database and worked into a meaningful order via the business logic in the stored procedure in regards to the user's inputs.

Even once this "report data" is created another query may be necessary to bring in some meaningful data from the inputed parameters.  This is really necessary when displaying in SSRS from the Reporting Server as each row in this query would be a displayable item in the report (the grouping of the report may change the query slightly but that is more a consideration once I have a complete understanding of how the report is to be designed).

So, the point is that this stored procedure generates the data for a single report and stores it in a table that contains this data for previously run reports.  My ideal situation would be to have the web page (or in our next version Silverlight control) call a method on the static type of the entity that represents this table of results that would return back the cached results for the report and pass this along to the telerik report.

This seams simple in theory.  I would just set the datasource for the report to be the results of this method call.  Am I correct in this assumption?

It should be noted that this is all fine and dandy if I can get to the point of actually "running" the report (I say running because the stored procedure actually creates the data and stores it in a table; in my simplest idea of how this would work the actually telerik report would "run" when it got the results of this query from a table - this report may be "run" multiple times but the stored procedure would only be run when the user wanted get the most up-to-date info).  Right now I cannot get the report designer to allow me to design a report with an object.

How do I do this???  I have created a report project and added it to my solution.  In this project I have included a reference to the assembly that deals exclusively with creating these entity objects and handing them off to consumers.  In the wizard I have followed the steps to use an object as a data source yet there are no auto-generated columns shown for the report nor are they appearing under the "Data Explorer".  The "Data Explorer" shows "No Data Source".

This leaves me wondering how to design a report when I cannot see the datasource in the designer.  I assume it would be possible for me to hand code each expression.  This seems tedious and time consuming.

The biggest advantages for us using Telerik's reporting is that we can embed the report in Silverlight and that we supposivly use Entity Framework business objects (or POCO - plain old class object) as a data source.  It just seems to me that it is possible, but just difficult or not a "best practice".

Please provide some ideas where I might be making bad assumptions, have incorrect ideas of what is possible, or some solutions to make our desired workflow possible.

Thanks,

Michael Gardner

I installed Telerik reporting tool Q3 2009, when I open VS 2008 and select add new item, the telerik reporting template is not among the icon list. I followed the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\VCSExpress\ItemTemplates but couldn't find the Telerik template directory. I repaired the installation a number of times but didn't bring change. I uninstalled and re-installed the tool yet didn't help. How do I start using the tool? I have a 32bit, Windows XP SP2 on Virtual Box. Please assist.

I have installed telerik reports

When I open up VS2010 b2 there is no telerik reports in the toolbox

there is no right click add telerik report option

have I missed something?

Hello,

currently I'm evaluating the Telerik Reporting. During my test I observed many emty pages in a report. It seems that the text is not displayed if it contains more than 32490 characters even though the space for the text is reserved (empty pages).

During my evaluation it turned out, that the Telerik Reporting is a great reporting tool and I would like to use it to replace the current reporting solution in a cusomer project. However, since long text is heavily used in the customers application I would like to know whether this bug is known and if there are any plans to fix it in the next time. Is there any workaround?

Best Regards
Olaf

I have a website created in one project then I created another project to test out the telerik report.  Each one is in their own directory and each works by themselves.  So now I want to add the report into a reportviewer on the webpage so here is what I do.

Open the website.
Add a reference
Browse to the bin/release (rpt_name.dll)
Press ok.
On the webapge I add a report viewer
Select the report I want it to show (It does show up in the drop down listing)
Build/publish the website (No compile errors)

Goto the webpage to view it and I get this.

This error pops up in the Silverlight Report Viewer after I deploy to prod - XAML rendering format is not available

Hi

I have a textbox on my report, and I have set the Value of it to ""=Fields.break_mins / 10". I have also set the format of the textbox to {0:N2}. It performs the calculation as it should, but the number is always rounded. E.g. if break_mins is 104, then the result is printed as 10.00 rather than 10.40. I have tried changing the number format to {0:D2} as well but the result is still the same. Is there a way to get it to perform the division without rounding the number?

Thanks in advance
Michael

Hi there.

I just noticed that in the web report viewer, that you are able to export a report without entering any required data. Is there a way to prevent this?

Thanks, MIke

Hi,

    Well after some days i learn how to use the telerik report and its awesome but there is something that is killing me! :S. I have 3 sections Report Header, Details and PageFooter:

Report Header: has a Table with report filters, titles, logos, etc. And the stadistic chart(correlational chart)
Details : has the table with the results.
PageFooter: has the page number.

   I want that after the Report Header the Details Section shows (i have actived KeepTogether = False, RowHeaderPrintOnEveryPage = true, so if there are too many results the table will continue in the hext page)  but the Details section jump to the next page and instead of that there is a yellow background !! T_T. That yellow background appears at second page too when my result table is too short to the complete page. I'll attach the report in pdf.

  By the way, i have set the Background.Style of each section to WHITE color, but only works at PageFooter.

Best Regards,
Moises.

I'm using tables in my report to make it easy for me to increase the height of sections programmatically. Now I need to add a field from the reports data source in the detail section to a table in the detail section. When I drag the field from the details section to the Table it uses the Tables data source which I don't have set so nothing is displayed. Is there a way to reference the reports fields within the table? If not I can control the flow of the individual controls.