Designer Issues
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Like many of you, I've been pounding on RS since I got it. As a developer of countless reports over the years using other tools, I must say I've found the RS design paradigm to be frustratingly different - if admittedly powerful. Take a simple report with free-form elements that must have a page break after a group like a record ID. It took quite a while to figure out the the only solution was to nest a list in a list - talk about a non-intuitive name for a control. Other reporting schemes like Access or Crystal are inherently a 'list control' container if you will. Interactive tables have taken a while to master as well. The organization of elements in a grid is also inscrutable - great control once you figure it out. I have not played with code yet, but the current implementation seems stunningly lame - where's the 'code behind' paradigm? How are events fired/responded to in code? Perhaps the RS guys should talk to the Access guys.
One other word to the wise - I've tried importing Access reports from a few different apps and find this process to be extremely weak and fragile as well - not being able to pick which reports I want to import is odd. Additionally, reports with code left in them appear to generate errors that kill the whole process - to wit, I exported about 50 reports into an unsecured database and tried to import them. I got only a few, all of which were corrupted in some fashion. I will trying stripping all code from these reports to see if this helps but I'm supposedly not required to do this. How many Access reports have you ever seen that don't at least have some code in the Close event? Ouch.
Finally, be aware that you need to build/rebuild frequently while making design changes - if you don't your machine will just lock up and freeze beyond even Ctrl+Alt+Del.
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Having played with RS for a few months myself I find it extremely good for a beta product.
As for your "page break after a group" gripe. Well you said it yourself you have a group, what are you grouping on, a record ID. RS has a few methods of producing a group. Once you've decided which method to use, each of them has a option of page-breaking before and after the group.
It is also fair to point out that most of the failures are related to the Visual Studio .Net IDE. This is out of the scope of RS. RS out of the picture I've had many VS.Net lockups developing simple ordinary VB.Net programs.
From my experience with moving from Access to SQL Server (database, reports, etc...) it has always proved more fruitful to re-develop the Access objects to take advantage of the enterprise application features.
Hope this helps
Phill Carter
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
Edited by - phillcart on 12/09/2003 5:30:04 PM
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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Thanks for the reply. Yes, the grouping was a petty gripe - I'd just like MS to raise the bar - perhaps I've been spoiled by the Access/Crystal design environment. RE the vs.net IDE, we use it every day all day long, and have never experienced the kind of lockups I have with the RD - not just vs.net, the whole machine. As for the Access imports, I realize its often better to completely re-build, but I'm looking to at least save time by getting the report fields and layout in place. As I said, the process does not WAD, and is (so far) designed very poorly. Regarding report code, are you aware of any intent to finish the job re exposing events and code behind in the designer? As implemented, it's a joke.
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At the moment it looks like MS has aimed to provided the basics of an extensible platform. I think the real gold for RS will be the third-party add-ons.
We are already looking at developing our own report delivery mechanism, the bean counters probably won't spring for the enterprise edition.
Hope this helps
Phill Carter
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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