1
votes

We are planning on creating reports to be run on the same computer that the database application is running on.

Can you tell me which of these is the best approach? (SQL Server Reporting Services or creating a rdlc ReportViewer report)

Also I tried to locate detailed rdlc ReportViewer report tutorials both in books and online and found none. It's probably because I'm looking in the wrong places.

We are also using VB.Net as the language.

All help will be appreciated.

1

1 Answers

2
votes

In a nutshell, .rdlc is the client version. You cannot host these on the report server. These reports do not know how to fetch the data, you MUST get the data yourself and pass it to the report. For this reason, you cannot even preview the report while designing. ReportViewer.ProccessingMode = Local

The .rdl or server reports know how to fetch the data. You configure the datasource and upload them to the report server. Because of this, you can preview the reports while designing them. You can use the web/desktop ReportViewer control to run the reports from inside your app...like a proxy between your application and the report server.ReportViewer.ProccessingMode = Remote

I prefer rdl for any sql datasource, but rdlc is also good for cases where your datasource is very complex or can only be built through the application code. I think there might be ways to configure an object datasource for rdl but I haven't looked into that yet.