What's New in Microsoft Reports

  • Article

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 contains the following new reporting features to help you design reports, display them in your applications, and integrate your applications with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services:

  • Report Designer for RDL 2008 Schema

  • New Report Wizard

  • Improvements in the ReportViewer Controls

  • AJAX Support in the ASP.NET Web Server Control

  • Programmability Improvements in the ReportViewer Controls

Report Designer for RDL 2008 Schema

The Visual Studio 2010 Report Designer supports report creation based on the Definition Language (RDL) 2008 schema. In Report Designer, you can create reports using report items such as the tablix, gauge, and enhanced chart data regions. The new features include:

  • Enhanced chart data region

  • New gauge data region

  • New tablix data region

  • Enhancements to Report Designer

  • New and enhanced report items and RDL elements

For more information on these new features in Report Designer, see What's New in Report Authoring in SQL Server Books Online.

When you open your existing RDL 2005 reports in Report Designer, you must elect to upgrade your report to the RDL 2008 schema. The Visual Studio 2010 Report Designer in does not support the RDL 2005 schema. However, you can still process your existing RDL 2005 reports in the Visual Studio 2010 ReportViewer controls, which support reports based on the RDL 2005 and RDL 2008 schemas in local processing mode.

When you use the ReportViewer controls in remote processing mode with a SQL Server 2008 or later version of the Reporting Services report server, you can enjoy report creation features available only in Reporting Services, such as custom report items and report models, by creating reports in Business Intelligence Development Studio. When you use the ReportViewer controls in remote processing mode with a SQL Server 2008 R2 version of the Reporting Services report server, you can enjoy even richer report creation features that are available in the RDL 2010 schema, such as maps, sparklines, and indicators.

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New Report Wizard

Visual Studio 2010 provides a new Report Wizard that simplifies data definition and report design by guiding you step-by-step through a series of tasks that lead to a finished report. You can run the Report Wizard to create a report quickly. For more information, see Creating Client Report Definitions Using the Visual Studio Report Wizard.

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Improvements in the ReportViewer Controls

Visual Studio 2010 contains new Windows Forms and ASP.NET ReportViewer controls that provide a rich set of functionality and user interface improvements. These improvements include:

  • Support for the SQL Server 2008 or later version of the Reporting Services report server
    The Visual Studio 2010 controls take advantage of the processing and rendering enhancements in SQL Server 2008 that help improve performance. For more information on these processing and rendering enhancements, see What's New in Report Processing and Rendering in SQL Server Books Online.

    Note

    The Visual Studio 2010 ReportViewer controls do not support the SQL Server 2005 version of Reporting Services report server.

  • .NET Framework multi-targeting
    The Visual Studio 2010 controls can now be used with both the 3.5 SP1 and 4 versions of the .NET Framework.
  • Updated look and feel
    The toolbar, the prompt areas, and the document map have been updated with a new look and feel.
  • Export to Microsoft Word
    In local processing mode, Microsoft Word is added as an export format.
  • ReportViewer ASP.NET AJAX control
    See AJAX Support in the ASP.NET Web Server Control.
  • Programmability improvements
    See Programmability Improvements in the ReportViewer Controls.

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AJAX Support in the ASP.NET Web Server Control

The Web server control is now an ASP.NET AJAX control. It takes advantage of AJAX to help reduce flickers in report navigation and improve interactivity of the user interface. As an ASP.NET AJAX control, the Web server control no longer uses an IFrame for asynchronous rendering of the report area. Instead, it uses the UpdatePanel to perform partial-page rendering through asynchronous postbacks to the server. For more information on partial-page rendering and asynchronous postbacks in ASP.NET AJAX, see Partial-Page Rendering Overview. In your AJAX application, you can also place the ReportViewer control in an UpdatePanel.

For more information on adding the ASP.NET Web server control to a Web form, see Walkthrough: Using a Database Data Source with the ReportViewer Web Server Control in Local Processing Mode.

The asynchronous postback behavior during interactivity is now controlled by the InteractivityPostBackMode property. Also, certain feature limitations due to the use of IFrame in previous versions are no longer applicable:

  • Previously, the SizeToReportContent property was ignored when AsyncRendering is set to true. Now it is always applicable regardless of the value of AsyncRendering.

  • Previously, the document map could only be displayed when AsyncRendering is set to true. Now it can be displayed regardless of the value of AsyncRendering.

The ReportViewer Web server control also provides client-side API based on the Microsoft AJAX Library that allows developers to programmatically perform client-side operations via JavaScript. For more information, see Microsoft.Reporting.WebFormsClient.ReportViewer Class.

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Programmability Improvements in the ReportViewer Controls

Programmability improvements to the ReportViewer controls include:

  • Richer event model
    More events are exposed to give you more control and customizability over both the functional and cosmetic aspects of the ReportViewer control. For example:

  • More status information
    More properties and methods are exposed to give your more information on the current status of the ReportViewer control. For example:

  • Client-side API
    See AJAX Support in the ASP.NET Web Server Control.
  • Asynchronous rendering
    See AJAX Support in the ASP.NET Web Server Control.
  • Session pings
    The KeepSessionAlive property enables you to control whether the ReportViewer control continues to ping the server to help keep a user session active or allow it to expire.
  • Device information settings for interactive reports
    The InteractiveDeviceInfos property enables you to supply device information settings for the report in the report area.
  • Printing customization
    Methods such as SetPageSettings and properties such as PrinterSettings (Windows Forms only) enable you to programmatically set the page size, margins, and default printer for the built-in page setup and print dialogs.
  • Localization
    More messages in the ReportViewer control are now available to you for customization and localization in the IReportViewerMessages3 interface.
  • Application domains
    The ReportViewer control now provides greater control of the sandboxed application domain in local processing mode. Due to changes in the code access security (CAS) feature in .NET Framework 4, the current application domain is no longer supported when used in .NET Framework 4 without setting the <NetFx40_LegacySecurityPolicy> flag in the Web.config file.

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See Also

Concepts

Microsoft Reports