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Prologika (Teo Lachev's Weblog)

Teo Lachev is a consultant, mentor, and author focusing on the design and development of Microsoft .NET business intelligence solutions. Read about Teo's work and life. Registered users can post comments.

September 2004 - Posts

  • Vote for my book

    If you liked my book “Microsoft Reporting Services in Action” please take a moment to vote for it at the Second Annual .NETDJ Readers' Choice Awards website.

    Thank you in advance for your support!

    Posted Sep 26 2004, 08:46 AM by admin with 1 comment(s)
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  • Export to Excel and Word with SoftArtisians' OfficeWriter

    Version 1.0 of Reporting Services doesn't support exporting reports to Microsoft Word format. It does support exporting to Excel but developers have limited control over the Excel renderer. For example, you may need provide placeholders (bookmarks in Word or markers in Excel) which will be populated during runtime with fields from your report query.

    SoftArtisians will release soon an RS version of their flagship product OfficeWriter which will bring flexible exporting to Excel and Word formats in the form of two additional rendering extensions. Currently, you can try out this product by subscribing to the SoftArtisians beta program here.

    You will most likely find the process of creating a Word or Excel report with OfficeWriter very straightforward. For example, to create a Word report you need to:

    1. Create a new Word file.

    2. Using the SoftArtisians Word toolbar set up a new query. Unfortunately, the query is not saved in the Word file so you have to recreate it every time you need to make a change.

    3. Create bookmarks in your Word document by inserting fields from the query. OfficeWriter supports repetative regions which allows you to generate tabular reports.

    4. Deploy your report to Report Server. During this step, OfficeWriter will generate the report RDL file which you will find in the same folder where the original Word file is located.

    Without a doubt, many report authors will find OfficeWriter useful when report requirements call for flexible rendering in Excel and Word.

     

  • Supercharge your reports with custom code

    Microsoft has just published my article “Microsoft Reporting Services in Action: Extending Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services with Custom Code“ on MSDN. Excerpted from my book Microsoft Reporting Services in Action, this article demonsrates how to implement advanced features in reports by integrating them with .NET assemblies.
  • Let's talk RS

    Please join me at the following events to learn more about Reporting Services:

     

    1. Atlanta.net User Group presentation (ADNUG) on September 27th
      I will show you how to report-enable WinForm or web applications by integrating them with Reporting Services. Get a sneak preview of the new RS controls that will be included in the next 2005 release of Reporting Services.
    2. SQL Pass Community Summit 2004 from Sept 29 to Sept 30 in Orlando, Florida
      I will join my coworkers from HP to present Reporting Services. Look for me in the HP exhibition booth (#301). Don’t miss this chance to ask me tough RS questions and see various code demos.
    3. Atlanta Microsoft Database Forum presentation (Atlanta.mdf) on October 11th
      Same as my ADNUG presentation.

    Looking forward to meeting you at one of these events!

     

    Posted Sep 07 2004, 09:48 AM by admin with 2 comment(s)
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