Hi Trent,



First, I know this could be a long topic and as such, I would ask you to take your time responding and also I know this is not directly related to SF, but you have done great things with RSS and I hope you can share some tricks with us.



I got to a point in Report Sharp Shooter (RSS) where I find myself doing many repetitive things per report and probably I am missing something in how to properly take advantage of RSS to handle many reports.



Up to now I have been doing one or two reports per form and I do the following:

- Add a ReportManager control, BBS for my reports and add my reports (using InlineReports). So far I have a Master Report which I use with all reports, so at least I don't have to do that all the time.

- For each report I have to create the following classes:

ReportDataSource.vb

ReportBBS.vb

ReportBO.vb

Of course using the SF Custom BBS wizard, these steps are easy, and I follow the same class patter used in StrataFlix.



Now I want to create a Report Center form to manage and allow End User to run reports, but don't know how would I handle the following:

- Sync my report manager table with data to run the reports, in other words if I have several reports records, when the user select a report, how to tell the ReportManager which report to run? can this be added on the fly or should I create all reports definition in the ReportManager?



- How would I optimize the process so I can re-use and run the same report from several forms?



- RSS saves the report definition in an rst file, should this file be included in the project?



I created my own preview form which works really great with a lot of functionality I added. For now I do not allow End User to make modifications to the report, but I did manage to add the feature for me to design a report while previewing, this way with the data from the BSS it is easier to design the report layout while previewing it.



Any other tip you can offer?



Thanks.

Edhy Rijo

Also, how to handle the data entry for the parameters to get the data for the report? For now I have been using bowse dialogs but that also means having to create a BD for almost each report.

Edhy Rijo

You ain't kiddin'



This could turn into a super long post. Instead of trying to explain all of this on this thread, I think I will try and allocate some time (please be patient) to create a video for this. It would be a lot easier.

Thanks a lot Trent, that will be just great!

Edhy Rijo

I would be interested in this as well even though I don't use Report SharpShooter it would probably be somewhat generic for all report writers.

Russ Brown (Using C#2010/SQL Server 2008)

Trent, did the video discussed here ever come about?

Hi Victor.

I don't think it did.

But let us know of your questions and we will help if possible.