RDL or RDLC for Business Central development?

MOomenCegekaDSA

Hello all,

Which type of file is recommended if you have to create an RDLC layout for a report or report extension in Business Central? RDLC or RDL? Or perhaps it does not matter?
I prefer RDLC because I can use Visual Studio for faster development and a better experience, also standard reports use .rdlc files.
But if you look at the online development documentation, for example the page on the Report Extension Object, Microsoft only describes .rdl files. Next to that the C in RDLC stands for Client Side, something we are moving away from due to the focus on SaaS, so this might impact the answer?

Thank you in advance for your replies.

Regards,
Martin Oomen
cegeka-dsa

MOomenCegekaDSA

Guessing there will not be any more responses, so I will close this post with this.

txeriff

I´ve checked my reports and AL generates RDL definition so better stick to that?

I´ve found this, hope it helps
http://www.differencebetween.net/technology/difference-between-rdl-and-rdlc/

MOomenCegekaDSA

@txeriff Thank you for your reply.
I also found the article you have linked, and although it describes the differences between RDL and RDLC very well, it does not answer if this impacts the usage in Business Central, especially for SaaS.
One of the reasons I think Microsoft uses RDL is because these are editable with the free report builder. But using the old Visual Studio for RDLC makes for a much better (and faster) development experience in my opinion, if you have the possibility.

txeriff

MOomenCegekaDSA wrote: »

@txeriff Thank you for your reply.
I also found the article you have linked, and although it describes the differences between RDL and RDLC very well, it does not answer if this impacts the usage in Business Central, especially for SaaS.
One of the reasons I think Microsoft uses RDL is because these are editable with the free report builder. But using the old Visual Studio for RDLC makes for a much better (and faster) development experience in my opinion, if you have the possibility.

but you had to pay licenses for coding in that one.

MOomenCegekaDSA

txeriff wrote: »

MOomenCegekaDSA wrote: »

@txeriff Thank you for your reply.
I also found the article you have linked, and although it describes the differences between RDL and RDLC very well, it does not answer if this impacts the usage in Business Central, especially for SaaS.
One of the reasons I think Microsoft uses RDL is because these are editable with the free report builder. But using the old Visual Studio for RDLC makes for a much better (and faster) development experience in my opinion, if you have the possibility.

but you had to pay licenses for coding in that one.

Well, I must admit that I do not have to deal with licenses myself, but as far as I know you can use the free Visual Studio Community Edition with the Microsoft RDLC Report Designer.

samantha73

You don't need community edition just download free Data tools which is a separate download
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/download-sql-server-data-tools-ssdt?view=sql-server-ver15

txeriff

samantha73 wrote: »

You don't need community edition just download free Data tools which is a separate download
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/ssdt/download-sql-server-data-tools-ssdt?view=sql-server-ver15

I recall back when NAV2013 was released they used to tell customer they had to buy VStudio licences but now maybe it works with community edition.

Anyway, now you just use report builder for free.

samantha73

The difference is the community edition takes too many resources where as SSDT does not if you only need SSRS piece

MOomenCegekaDSA

Thank you for your input. I do think the discussion went a bit off topic, the question is there a reason to differentiate between RDL and RDLC next to the available tooling? Such as RDLC is not recommended for use SaaS environments since this executes Client Side?

MOomenCegekaDSA

Guessing there will not be any more responses, so I will close this post with this.