Validating RDL for extension report in Business Central?

borealis

I am doing a report in BC CU4 on-prem and have generated the extension object and the RDL file for that object, but I'm getting issues rendering the report which I believe is due to an error in my RDL. In the 2018 and prior versions the compiler would nicely flag any RDL errors, however I have noticed that the BC compiler seems to take it as a given that the RDL is correct.

I know for a fact that my original version of the RDL did have errors that were not reported but which I subsequently found, but I've been over the RDL again a few times and haven't been able to spot any further issues that jump out at me.

The precise error when the report is printed is "An error occurred while trying to display the report." in the preview window.

My question is whether there is some other method of validating the RDL? I am using the SQL Server 2016 Report Builder to generate the RDL, and doing limited verification using notepad++ to try to spot issues in the 4840 line RDL file. Somebody somewhere has to have built a tool for this haven't they? Worth noting this is my first attempt to build a non-processing report via extension, so it's possible I'm doing something fundamentally wrong.

borealis

FYI, for anybody else searching for this, it doesn't seem like there are currently built in tools to validate the RDL. My recommendation if you do get this error is to make a backup copy of your RDL file, and then delete elements of your layout until the report works. That way you'll at least have a general idea of what area your problem lies in, and can selectively delete elements until you find the control that has the issue.

It's a crap way to validate RDL but it works, albeit a lot slower than having a compiler tell you exactly where it is.

ShaiHulud

Visual Studio 2017 (don't know about other versions at the moment) has such a feature: select Build->Build Solution.

Errors, if any, will be shown at the bottom (on default layout), on the Output window:

borealis

FYI, for anybody else searching for this, it doesn't seem like there are currently built in tools to validate the RDL. My recommendation if you do get this error is to make a backup copy of your RDL file, and then delete elements of your layout until the report works. That way you'll at least have a general idea of what area your problem lies in, and can selectively delete elements until you find the control that has the issue.

It's a crap way to validate RDL but it works, albeit a lot slower than having a compiler tell you exactly where it is.

ShaiHulud

Visual Studio 2017 (don't know about other versions at the moment) has such a feature: select Build->Build Solution.

Errors, if any, will be shown at the bottom (on default layout), on the Output window: