I have developed a renderer that renders the xml to paint a rectangle with textboxes in all the right places based on the data retrieved off the database. When i render the a complete report to the reportviewer i have no problem.
I need however to render the rectangle into a custom report item for reusability and different scenarios. This just seem to be impossible since it seems like I cant use anything other than an imagemap to render custom report items. Is this true?
To make sure you understand....in other words....
Is there a way to develop a Microsoft.ReportingServices.ReportRendering.IRenderingExtension that renders the required xml like rectangles/textboxes etc. and then migrate this to a custom toolbox item. It just seems like this should be a very easy thing to do and something regularly needed. For example when you want to use textboxes in certain positions within a rectangle to draw a organisational chart.
CRIs can output only images.
|||If that is the case which i take as unnessary and very easy to fix on Micsoft's part....I have a follow up question:
Can one in any way put a custom assembly in some container like a rectangle instead of just a textbox to have it render your custom xml into a report. I have tried this in many ways and it does not seem to be an option?
and if that answer is also no.....I have a follow-up question:
How do one change the RDL of a report to reference a custom assembly that renders XML as part of the report RDL?
and if that is not possible...am i missing something here....is there anyway in which i can on runtime decide where to represent my data?
My problem is a very simple one, i have written a report rdl generator that generates a pedigree of a horse where each horse in the hierarchichal structure has a Name, birth, color etc, and a picture. If the only way I can do this is the way I am doing it I have to write every part of the report everytime I want the pedigree to appear in a different layout instead of being able too user the fantastic report designer.
A similar issue should exist in project management with pert and cpm/ workflow/ flowcharts/human resouce management etc. etc. etc.
Any direction will be appreciated...
|||Can one in any way put a custom assembly in some container like a rectangle instead of just a textbox to have it render your custom xml into a report.
Not sure what you mean by "a custom assembly in some container" means but I wonder if the following approach will work for you since you've mentioned that you can programatically generate the report definition.
1. The report will have a single dataset with a single row and as many columns as the number of horses. Each column according to its place in the hierarchy in an ever-increasing order from top to bottom and left to right, e.g.; 1Name, 1Color, 1Photo, 2Name, 2Color.
2. You generate a free-form report programatically by walking the hierarchy and binding each textbox to its corresponding field.
It looks like you have considered a similar aproach, haven't you? Granted, you won't be able to use the Report Designer. As SSRS involves, it will undoubtedly offer more runtime flexibility but for now you cannot change the report definition at runtime.
If you can wait, another option with SSRS 2008 could be a pert chart. If you can't wait, Dundas offers this chart now.
|||Teo, thank you for your time and effort with this. Well yes i know i can do it that way but the problem with that is then you limit yourself to a fixed format. You can not change the number of levels or even the specific data to be included on the fly. I now have decided that I wil just have to use my own renderer and forget about the designer.
You see i have developed this recursive sql procedure and recursive report painter that will do the whole thing based on the property settings including the size of the page, the number of levels and what data to include and what not. I was just hoping I could put it all into a custom item to make life easier when you want to print a 44x60in poster versus a 8x10 or 15 genearations versus 5.
I must say i can think of no logical reason why Microsoft cant allow the CRI to render any type of report item. They already render all the types and it does not make sense that they would limit developers to only imagetypes.
Note: With "a custom assembly in some container" i meant that currently you can write a custom asembly which you reference in a textbox to return a value. on the same logic one should have been able to reference a custom asssembly from a Rectangle and have the custom assembly return the reportitemscontained inside the rectangle. There are a few ways in which it can be implemented fairly easy.
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