Deploying reports and ReportViewer controls RDLC

Original: Deployment report and ReportViewer control RDLC

Deploying Reports and ReportViewer controls

You can freely publish reports and ReportViewer controls as part of your application. Deployment requirements vary greatly depending on the type of control and whether the report is configured for local or remote processing. In the same application, you can deploy a locally processed report, or you can deploy a remote-processed report.

Republish the ReportViewer control

The ReportViewer control that can be republished is a self-extracting file named ReportViewer.exe, which includes an. msi file and other files. You can find Reportviewer.exe:c:\program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\sdk\v2.0\bootstrapper\packages\reportviewer\ in the following locations ReportViewer.exe.

When you run ReportViewer.exe, the following files are copied to the Global Assembly Cache folder on the deployment computer.

file	Description
Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common	Provides core reporting capabilities that are common to ReportViewer Windows forms controls and Web server controls.
Microsoft.ReportViewer.ProcessingObjectModel	Exposes the report object model so that it can be accessed programmatically at run time from an expression in the report definition.
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WebForms	Provides an ReportViewer control for an ASP.
Microsoft.ReportViewer.WinForms	Provides ReportViewer controls for Windows applications.

Run ReportViewer.exe

The type of control you use determines where to run ReportViewer.exe.

• For an ASP. NET application, you should run ReportViewer.exe on the WEB server that hosts your application.

• For Windows forms applications, you should add controls as prerequisites for your application so that they are installed automatically with your application. You can use the bootstrap application to automate this step:

  1. Open the Project Properties page.

  2. Click Publish, and then click Prerequisites.

  3. Select Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Report Viewer, and then click OK.

  4. Publish the application.

When you install the application, a check is made on the local computer to determine whether ReportViewer is installed. If it is not already installed, the Setup program installs it.

Deploying a localized version of the ReportViewer control

The ReportViewer control includes language packs in eight languages: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish. To use a localized version of the control, you must do the following:

1. Run ReportViewer.exe.

2. Navigate to the folder that contains the language pack that you want to use. The Language Pack folder is located in the < drive >:\program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\sdk\v2.0\bootstrapper\packages\reportviewer\ < language > under.

3. Run ReportViewerLP.exe.

To use a different language in the ReportViewer control, you can implement Microsoft.Reporting.WebForms.IReportViewerMessages or Microsoft.Reporting.WinForms.IReportViewerMessages interface to create ToolTips and other user interface text in a specific language.

Determining browser language and culture settings

When you use the ReportViewer Web server control to host a report in a browser application, it is important to set the thread culture if you want to provide a user interface that matches the browser language and culture settings. ASP. NET does not set the thread culture based on the header information provided by the client. To make the application match the culture settings of the browser, you can set the System.Threading.Thread.CurrentCulture in the application code and System.Threading.Thread.CurrentUICulture. For more information about how to handle the culture settings of an application, see System.Globalization.CultureInfo.

Considerations for deploying Report Viewer Web Server controls

Deploying an ASP. NET application in a Web farm requires additional configuration to ensure that view state is maintained throughout the farm. If you are deploying ReportViewer Web server controls in a Web farm environment, you should specify the MachineKey element in your application's Web. config file. For more information, see Web. config settings for ReportViewer.

The reports that are processed in the ReportViewer Web server control have different requirements for the browser. Browser compatibility issues can affect the availability of certain kinds of reporting features. For more information, see Browser Support for ReportViewer Web server controls.

Distributing reports

Unless a client report definition (. rdlc) file is dynamically generated at run time, the locally processed report is stored on the file system with a. rdlc file and must be supplied with the application. These files can be installed on a disk drive or compiled into an application executable file.

Reports that are processed on the remote server are stored on the Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Report Server. The application does not contain any report files because the report is remoting and the report does not exist on the local system. To deploy a report that is published on a report server, you must provide access to the report server and ensure that the application user has permission to view the reports on that server. Deploying server reports requires an understanding of the authentication extensions used by the report server, as well as the role-based authentication mode that provides access to content and permissions for operations. For more information, see Deployment Considerations for Server reports.

Deploying reports and ReportViewer controls RDLC