Some Advise on Reporting Services and PCL

  • I am a .NET C# Developer. I have never used Reporting Services or for that matter any report generation tool (i.e Crystal Reports). My boss wants me to create a document/report that basically shows the data from one or two rows in a SQL Server database. On the surface this sounds simple. The problem for me is that the legacy system (which I am replacing) generates its reports using PCL. Therefore the legacy reports have these pretty boxes that surround the data. In addition all of the data is underlined. Since I would rather learn how to use a reporting tool rather then PCL, I was wondering if Reporting Services (or any report generator) can display the data in the same manner as the legacy system does? If so, I could use some direction as to what are the next step(s) for me in order to learn how to create these reports using a report generation tool.

    Thanks so much.

  • Reporting services can very easily duplicate what you describe, it would be a simple job of creating the SQL to get the data (as a c# developer I'm sure you can do that), then creating a report in SSRS.

    In SSRS you basically need to:

    1. Create a new report project in visual studio

    2. Create a data source for the project (your SQL Server DB)

    3. Create a new report

    4. Create a data set for your report

    5. Add a "Table" to your report layout

    6. Add the data columns to the table

    This is of course very much simplified, you will need to read up a little on each step, but for that type of report SSRS is perfect (and for very much more complex reports).

    Good luck,

    Nigel West
    UK

  • I want to thank you for getting back to me so quickly. I was wondering if it was possible to add a button to a webpage that when clicked, ran this report? If so, could the report automatically be printed or displayed in its own page so that user can print it from the browser (sorry if these questions seem a little on the dumb side, I have never done this stuff before)?

    Is there a tutorial that you would recommend?

    Thanks

  • The short answer to your question is yes, no problem, SSRS reports are all web based and therefore you could call them on a std URL.

    For the manual, I use Pro SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services which is available on Apress.com (just search for the title), but I'm sure there are many other books available.

    Nigel West
    UK

  • Thanks so much. I really didn't want to have to bother with PCL.

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