RDLC vs. RDL

ta5

Hi
This may be a bit excessively, but anyway:

When when a layout for the RTC is added, a RDLC file is added to the blob of the report. It's not a RDL file.
If I remember right, for marketing purposes it was emphasized that RTC uses sql server reporting services, but my reports in RTC also work if reporting services is stopped.

So my question: The "c" stands for client, does this mean NAV 2009 doesn't use sql server reporting services at all? Could actually make sense for me, because all the processing/retrieving of the data items is not part of the layout, but is still in the "old" report. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Looking forward to get some insights.
Thomas

kine

Yes, it is only Client side rendering, not using Reporting services at all (the NAV 2009 is working on SQL Express - without reporting services... ;-).

ta5

Don't they state it's reporting services? Maybe this was in an earlier stage?
Thomas

kine

That's just about naming... the RDLC is part of the Reporting Service. It means it is "Reporting Services" but only some subset of functionality of the whole system.

ara3n

kine wrote:

That's just about naming... the RDLC is part of the Reporting Service. It means it is "Reporting Services" but only some subset of functionality of the whole system.

the name is misleading. I have to agree. They should call it the new SQL reporting render.

ta5

Thanks, I was just wondering...

Michael_Nielsen_[MSFT]

The difference between RDL and RDLC is that RDL contains a SQL query where RDLC contains a dataset.

The layout part of RDL and RDLC are the same. However, RDL comes both in a 2005 and a 2008 flavour where RDLC only comes in a 2005 flavour. This means that RDL 2008 and RDLC 2005 has different layout schemas and uses different VS editors.

The reason for using client side rendering instead of server side in NAV 2009 is that we did not want to add the complexity and cost of the reporting server.

ta5

Thanks Michael for your comments on that!

I'll use the oportunity to dig a bit deeper, hope you don't mind.
My theory was/is also is also about the following:
When RTC runs a report the data items and the code behind is run anyway, in a record per record manner. When the "classic part" of the reports has finished the control and the resulting dataset is given to the RDLC part. Reporting services would not make too much sense here because data access is quite different and it would be difficult to emulate the code on the trigger "onAfterGetRecord". Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks
Thomas

Michael_Nielsen_[MSFT]

Yes that is correct - In order to reuse the dataset generation (including running business logic) from the classic reports we can not rely on reporting service