You design a Business Intelligence (BI) solution by using SQL Server 2008. Employees use a Windows Forms application based on Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5. SQL Server is not installed on the employees’ computers.
You write a report by using Report Definition Language (RDL). You need to ensure that if the employees are disconnected from the corporate network, the application renders the report.
What should you do?
A.
Configure the application to use an SSRS Web service by using the Render method.
B.
Configure the application to use an SSRS Web service by using the RenderStream method.
C.
Embed ReportViewer in the application and configure ReportViewer to render reports by using the local processing mode.
D.
Embed ReportViewer in the application and configure ReportViewer to render reports by using the remote processing mode.
Explanation:
Tip: "Report Definition Language … disconnected" = "ReportViewer … local"Embedding Custom ReportViewer Controls
Microsoft provides two controls in Visual Studio 2008 that allow you to embed SSRS reports (or link to an existing SSRS report hosted on an SSRS instance) in your custom Windows Forms or Web Forms applications. Alternatively, you can also design some types of reports from within Visual Studio and then host them in your custom applications.
The two report processing modes that this control supports are remote processing mode and local processing mode.
Remote processing mode allows you to include a reference to a report that has already been deployed to a report server instance. In remote processing mode, the ReportViewer control encapsulates the URL access method we covered in the previous section. It uses the SSRS Web service to communicate with the report server.Referencing deployed reports is preferred for BI solutions because the overhead of rendering and processing the often large BI reports is handled by the SSRS server instance or instances. Also, you can choose to scale report hosting to multiple SSRS servers if scaling is needed for your solution. Another advantage to this mode is that all installed rendering and data extensions are available to be used by the referenced report. Local processing mode allows you to run a report from a computer that does not have SSRS
installed on it.
Local reports are defined differently within Visual Studio itself, using a visual design interface that looks much like the one in BIDS for SSRS. The output file is in a slightly different format for these reports if theyre created locally in Visual Studio. Its an *.rdlc file rather than an *.rdl file, which is created when using a Report Server Project template in BIDS. The *.rdlc file is defined as an embedded resource in the Visual Studio project. When displaying *.rdlc files to a user, data retrieval and processing is handled by the hosting application, and the report rendering (translating it to an output format such as HTML or PDF) is handled by the ReportViewer control. No server-based instance of SSRS is involved, which makes it very useful when you need to deploy reports to users that are only occasionally connected to the network and thus wouldnt have regular access to the SSRS server. Only PDF, Excel, and image-rendering extensions are supported in local processing mode. If you use local processing mode with some relational data as your data source, a new report design area opens up. As mentioned, the metadata file generated has the *.rdlc extension. When working in local processing mode in Visual Studio 2008, youre limited to working with the old-style data containersthat is, table, matrix, or list. The new combined-style Tablix container is not available in this report design mode in Visual Studio 2008. Both versions of this control include a smart tag that helps you to configure the associated required properties for each of the usage modes. Also, the ReportViewer control is freely redistributable, which is useful if youre considering using either version as part of a commercial application.
(Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2008, Copyright 2009 by Kevin Goff and Lynn Langit)