Creating RDL using information contained in an existing Data Model

This question is in regard to creating RDL programmatically, using information contained in an existing Data Model; basically mimicking what the Report Builder does.

What I need to do is integrate a dummied down version of the Report Builder into an existing web application; where users will have the option to build and save reports using a very simple web interface, 4 step process. This process will only have a very few of the options that the Report Builder has.

So far I have built this process referencing the Microsoft Reporting Services dll's (Microsoft.ReportingServices.Modeling.dll for example), in order to retrieve the entity and attributes information from the Data Model.

** Does anyone know how I could create the RDL, using both the entity and attribute information contained in the Data Model in association with selected fields, filters, etc, that is contained in a database?

I can't find anything about this anywhere on the net; any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,

Dan

There isn't an MS tool to automate this with RS 2005. To meet a similar requirement and speed up the implementation effort, we decided to develop an object wrapper on top of RDL which knows how to serialize itself to RDL using the .NET XmlSerializer. In comparison with the XML DOM alternative, we found this approach to work much better for us. You need to familiriaze yourself with the RDL specification beforehand.|||

Btw, more information about the RDL specification mentioned by Teo is available here: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/reporting/rdlspec.mspx

-- Robert

|||Well thank you very much for this information, I just wanted to make sure I was not missing out on existing functionality!

Creating multiple Tab Deliminted Exports

Is there a way to read from a table to get values that will be contained within a "where" clause of another SQL statement that can be ready one by one(meaning the same sql statement will be executed mutliple times) that will export a tab delimted file?

Hi Cheston,

In my case, I was able to use Execute SQL Task to output the final result set using the code something like this

SELEC * FROM (SELECT * FROM Table1) Table2 WHERE (Tablestatus <> 'No Change'), but then the question is how I can export the Result Set in a tab delimitted format.

|||

cheston wrote:

Is there a way to read from a table to get values that will be contained within a "where" clause of another SQL statement that can be ready one by one(meaning the same sql statement will be executed mutliple times) that will export a tab delimted file?

You can select your values using an execute SQL task on the control flow. Then using a foreach loop, you would "shred" the variable populated from the execute SQL task. Inside the foreach loop, you would run your data flow. Build a package level scoped variable, set EvaluateAsExpression = True and build an expression that contains your base SQL statement, and then concatenates to it the value of the foreach loop's variable (which would contain just one iteration's WHERE clause as selected from the table). Then, inside the data flow, use an OLE DB Source which uses a variable as the source for the SQL. Pick the variable you just built with the expression.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell.|||

See is that example helps:

http://rafael-salas.blogspot.com/2006/12/import-header-line-tables-into-dynamic_22.html