Article information
Article relates to	Telerik Reporting Q2 2012 +
Last modified	July 25th 2012

Telerik Reporting is an embedded reporting engine developed on top of Microsoft’s .NET framework. As such the reports are CLR objects and  can be used from the developers following the basic concepts of the programming language and the .NET platform. With the introduction of the XML report definition the reports can exist not only as CLR types and objects in the memory but as XML markup stored in different ways (file, database, etc.). As we do not want to limit the users to work with only objects or files the need for a unified way for referencing reports in the applications emerged - Report Sources.

While the pre-Q2 2012 reports still work we strongly advice to migrate your applications to the new concept.  This article describes the affected APIs of Telerik Reporting and what steps to be taken in order to start using the new ReportSource objects.

The available report sources are:

• InstanceReportSource - This report source is used when you have a reference to an existing Report object and covers most of the existing scenarios including the SubReport item, the WinForms, WPF and ASP.NET viewers and the programmatic rendering of report using the ReportProcessor (RenderReport Method and PrintReport Method).
• TypeReportSource - The reports created with Visual Studio are usually stored as .NET classes. To access a .net class declaratively you can use the assembly qualified name of the type. Referencing reports using their assembly qualified type name is already used in the NavigateToReportAction, ASP.NET and Silverlight viewers.
• UriReportSource - The URI report source allows you to load a report document either from a file path or from an Url.
• XmlReportSource - The report source allows you to load a report from XML markup (in the form of String, Stream or TextReader).

In general the report source represents a pointer to the report (object reference, assembly qualified type name, an URI to a file or XML markup) and parameters. When provided, the values of the ReportSource parameters are applied to the Report parameters at run-time. Prior Q2 2012, these Report parameters were part of the NavigateToReportAction (drill-through action) and the SubReport item (master-detail scenario).

Subreport

The following properties of the SubReport item are now obsolete and when used the compiler will generate the following warnings:

• Telerik.Reporting.SubReport.ReportSource property is now of type Telerik.Reporting.ReportSource. Please, use Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource to build existing reports.
• Telerik.Reporting.SubReport.Parameters property is now obsolete. Please, set a Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource object for the Telerik.Reporting.SubReport.ReportSource property instead and add the parameters to its Parameters collection.

Here is a sample snippet that shows how to specify a report for the SubReport item and its corresponding report parameters:
C#
pre-Q2 2012:

Q2 2012 and later:

VB.NET
pre-Q2 2012:

Q2 2012 and later:

NavigateToReportAction

The following properties of the NavigateToReportAction are now obsolete and when used the compiler will generate the following warnings:

• Telerik.Reporting.NavigateToReportAction.ReportDocumentType property is now obsolete. Please use the Telerik.Reporting.NavigateToReportAction.ReportSource property instead with a Telerik.Reporting.TypeReportSource object to build existing reports.
• Telerik.Reporting.NavigateToReportAction.Parameters property is now obsolete. Please, set a Telerik.Reporting.TypeReportSource object for the Telerik.Reporting.NavigateToReportAction.ReportSource property instead and add the parameters to its Parameters collection.

Here is a sample snippet that shows how to specify a report for NavigateToReportAction and its corresponding report parameters:

C#
pre-Q2 2012:

Q2 2012 and later:

VB.NET
pre-Q2 2012:

Q2 2012 and later:

Report Viewers

Windows Forms Report Viewer

The Report property of the Winforms report viewer is now obsolete and when used the compiler will generate the following warning:

• Telerik.ReportViewer.WinForms.ReportViewer.Report is now obsolete. Please, use the ReportSource property instead.

Here is a sample code snippet that shows how to assign a report to WinForms report viewer:

C#
pre-Q2 2012:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

// perform additional operations on the report object if needed

ReportViewer1.Report = report1;

Q2 2012 and later:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

// perform additional operations on the report object if needed           

Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource instanceReportSource = new  Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource();

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1;

this.ReportViewer1.ReportSource = instanceReportSource;

VB.NET
pre-Q2 2012:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

'perform additional operations on the report object if needed

ReportViewer1.Report = report1

Q2 2012 and later:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

'perform additional operations on the report object if needed

Dim instanceReportSource As New Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource()

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1

Me.ReportViewer1.ReportSource = instanceReportSource

ASP.NET Report Viewer

The Report property of the ASP.NET report viewer is now obsolete and when used the compiler will generate the following warning:

• Telerik.ReportViewer.WebForms.ReportViewer.Report is now obsolete. Please, use the ReportSource property instead.

When settnig the report declaratively one should use the assembly qualified name of the report class. Here is a sample HTML markup of how a report was assigned to the ASP.NET viewer from the web form designer:

HTML markup
pre-Q2 2012:

Q2 2012 and later:

When settnig the report programmatically one should use an instance of the report class. Here is a sample code snippet that shows how to do this:

C#
pre-Q2 2012:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

// perform additional operations on the report object if needed

ReportViewer1.Report = report1;

Q2 2012 and later:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

// perform additional operations on the report object if needed           

Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource instanceReportSource = new  Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource();

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1;

this.ReportViewer1.ReportSource = instanceReportSource;

VB.NET
pre-Q2 2012:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

'perform additional operations on the report object if needed

ReportViewer1.Report = report1

Q2 2012 and later:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

'perform additional operations on the report object if needed

Dim instanceReportSource As New Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource()

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1

Me.ReportViewer1.ReportSource = instanceReportSource

WPF Report Viewer

The Report property of the WPF report viewer is now obsolete and when used the compiler will generate the following warning:

• Telerik.ReportViewer.Wpf.ReportViewer.Report is now obsolete. Please, use the ReportSource property instead.

Here is a sample XAML markup of how a report was assigned to the WPF viewer:

pre-Q2 2012:
Q2 2012 and later:

Here is a sample code snippet that shows how to assign a report to the WPF report viewer programmatically:

C#
pre-Q2 2012:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

// perform additional operations on the report object if needed

ReportViewer1.Report = report1;

Q2 2012 and later:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

// perform additional operations on the report object if needed           

Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource instanceReportSource = new  Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource();

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1;

this.ReportViewer1.ReportSource = instanceReportSource;

VB.NET
pre-Q2 2012:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

'perform additional operations on the report object if needed

ReportViewer1.Report = report1

Q2 2012 and later:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

'perform additional operations on the report object if needed

Dim instanceReportSource As New Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource()

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1

Me.ReportViewer1.ReportSource = instanceReportSource

Silverlight Report Viewer

The Telerik Reporting WCF Service report resolvers now create a ReportSource instead of an IReportDocument.

Using the ReportProcessor

When you use the report processor to directly print (PrintReport Method) or render (RenderReport Method) a report, the argument is now of  ReportSource type instead of an IReportDocument.

RenderReport:
C#
pre-Q2 2012:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

Telerik.Reporting.Processing.ReportProcessor reportProcessor = new Telerik.Reporting.Processing.ReportProcessor();

Telerik.Reporting.Processing.RenderingResult result = reportProcessor.RenderReport("PDF", report1, null);

Q2 2012 and later:

Report1 report1 = new Report1();

Telerik.Reporting.Processing.ReportProcessor reportProcessor = new Telerik.Reporting.Processing.ReportProcessor();

Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource instanceReportSource = new Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource();

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1;

Telerik.Reporting.Processing.RenderingResult result = reportProcessor.RenderReport("PDF", instanceReportSource, null);

VB.NET
pre-Q2 2012:

Q2 2012 and later:

Dim report1 As New Report1()

Dim reportProcessor As New Telerik.Reporting.Processing.ReportProcessor()

Dim instanceReportSource As New Telerik.Reporting.InstanceReportSource()

instanceReportSource.ReportDocument = report1

Dim result As Telerik.Reporting.Processing.RenderingResult = reportProcessor.RenderReport("PDF", instanceReportSource, Nothing)

Conclusion

In this article we list all API changes in Q2 2012 version of Telerik Reporting regarding the new Report Sources.  As shown there is no conceptual difference between the old and new approach as all existing scenarios have direct match of a report source: report instance - InstanceReportSource + report instance; type name - TypeReportSource + type name. Note that you are not limited to these two types of report source and you can easily mix any according to your needs.

The sole purpose of the changes is to extend the existing functionality and fit the XML report definition in the reporting engine while preserving the backwards compatibility. What’s more editing a report in the VS report designer will use the new objects instead of the obsolete properties when saving.