Reporting with Visual Studio 2008 Windows Forms

This chapter will cover • Developing VS 2008 reports using Windows Forms • Developing reports using Report Wizard Developing VS 2008 Reports Using Windows Forms The steps needed to creat

Reporting with Visual Studio

2008 Windows Forms

In the past 13 chapters, you saw RS in action with a variety of different clients and learned

various techniques for developing cool reports Chapter 13 concluded our discussion of

client-side RS, but there is one last topic we still have to look into—developing reports with

Visual Studio 2008 (yes, the release after VS 2005)

“Orcas” was the codename for the upcoming release of Visual Studio As I was working onthis book, VS 2008 was still in community preview, and stable client-side RS functionality was

provided in the beta 1 release of VS 2008 Therefore, I decided to include two chapters to let

you know how VS 2008 interacts with client-side RS

I’m sure many questions might be popping up in your mind now How different is reportdevelopment in VS 2008 compared with VS 2005? Can I use the knowledge from the past 13

chapters to my advantage and develop similar reports with VS 2008? Not to worry! The good

news is almost all the reports we developed so far can be created with VS 2008 in a similar

fashion To prove it, I’ll show you how to develop VS 2008 reports with Windows Forms in this

chapter, and in the last chapter of this book, you’ll learn to develop reports with VS 2008 using

ASP.NET Web Forms

This chapter will cover

• Developing VS 2008 reports using Windows Forms

• Developing reports using Report Wizard

Developing VS 2008 Reports Using

Windows Forms

The steps needed to create a Windows Forms client with VS 2008 are similar to those for

creating with one with VS 2005 Sure, there will be some product enhancements in VS 2008

However, both the IDEs are much the same when it comes to developing the client-side

reports One cool addition to VS 2008 is Report Wizard; the next section of this chapter

shows Report Wizard in action!

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C H A P T E R 1 4

Product Profitability Report

You’re working for AdventureWorks, Incorporated as a developer You have the task of ing a Product Profitability report Along with product pricing details, you also need to showprofit on each product as an individual pie chart The report should meet all the characteris-tics described in Table 14-1, and the report output should match Figure 14-1

develop-Table 14-1.Report Characteristics

Characteristics Value

Report title Product Profitability Report

Company title AdventureWorks Inc

Print date Yes

Page number Yes (Page: n/n)

Data source tblProductProfit

Columns to report ProductName, ListPrice, CostPrice, ProfitAmount

Page size Letter

Page orientation Portrait

Layout design Header and body sections

Figure 14-1.The Product Profitability report

Business Case

We know the prime objective of business is to make a profit Every product has a base cost,

which is the cost of the purchase, the cost of the manufacturing, or both Businesses must set

a list price for the product that includes the profit markup on top of the cost

Folks in sales and marketing departments especially look for reports like the Product itability report to check on how much profit margin each product contributes This report also

Prof-helps them to make important decisions, like adjusting the list price for big orders to attain a

suitable profit

Getting the Windows Forms Application Ready

Please open Visual Studio, and use the following steps, illustrated in Figure 14-2, to create a

Windows application project:

1. Click File ➤New ➤Project, or press the hot keys Ctrl+Shift+N

2. In the “Project types” pane of the New Project dialog box, select Visual C# ➤Windows

3. In the Templates pane, select Windows Forms Application

4. Please give the application a name; I’ve called the project ProductProfit You maychoose a different location for storing the application files according to your prefer-ence Visual Studio 2008 lets you choose your target NET Framework; I want you toselect NET Framework 2.0, as we have used this framework through this book (it is OK

to choose 3.0 or 3.5 also if you wish to create the Windows Forms application)

5. Click the OK button to finish the process After you click OK, Visual Studio will create anew Windows Forms application project You’ll also notice that a new form with thename Form1 is part of the project

Similar to the way we did in the past reporting projects, its time to add the dataset andReportViewer Let’s start by selecting the project in Solution Explorer, right-clicking it, and

selecting Add ➤New Item ➤DataSet Please name the dataset dsProductProfit Before you

add the ReportViewer, please make sure that Form1 is open in the designer Now, add the

ReportViewer to the project by dragging Data ➤ReportViewer from the toolbox and dropping

it onto the design surface

Figure 14-2.Creating a new Windows application

Please make sure you set the properties in Table 14-2 After you specify all the properties,your Form1 should look similar to Figure 14-3

Table 14-2.Property Settings for ProductProfit Project

Form1 Text Product Profitability Report

Form1 Size 790, 500

reportViewer1 Dock Fill

Figure 14-3.The project after adding the dataset and ReportViewer

Step 1: Creating a Data Table

Since we already have the dataset in the project, it’s time to add a data table to it Please use

the following steps to add a data table inside the dataset:

1. You can go to the dataset designer in two ways: double-click dsProductProfit insideSolution Explorer, or right-click the dsProductProfit node and select View Designer

2. Let’s add the data table by right-clicking the design surface and selecting Add ➤

DataTable

3. Click the header of the newly created data table, and name it dtProductProfit Let’sstart adding columns to dtProductProfit by right-clicking the data table and selectingAdd ➤Column

4. Please add the following columns into the data table, which should then look similar toFigure 14-4:

• ProductName (System.String)

• ListPrice (System.Double)

• CostPrice (System Double)

• ProfitAmount (System Double)

Figure 14-4.Final look of the data table dtProductProfit

Step 2: Designing the Report Layout

Before we start with the layout design for the report, let’s take a moment to analyze the reportlayout shown in Figure 14-1 The report lists information consisting of four different columns.What makes this report interesting are the individual pie charts showing the profit ratio foreach of the products

We’re all set to work on designing the report layout Let’s start adding the report by ing the project in Solution Explorer, right-clicking it, and selecting Add ➤New Item SelectReport in the Add New Item dialog box Please name the report rptProductProfit.rdlc Click

select-the Add button to complete select-the process and add a new report to select-the project

Adding a Header

Let’s add the header to the report As usual, adding a header is simple; all you have to do isright-click the open area inside the report designer and select Page Header After completingthe action, your report design surface should look similar to the one shown in Figure 14-5

Figure 14-5.The report designer with header and body sections

Setting Up the Page

According to the report’s needs, let’s set up the page We need to make sure the report is lettersize and has a portrait page orientation Right-click the open area inside the design surface,and select Properties; you may wish to put your name in the Author field and informationabout the report in the Description field

Designing the Page Header

Now, we have the header and the body sections added to our report As usual, you may decide

to work on any of them first; but as we do always, let’s work on the header first Please drag the

following report items from the toolbox and drop them inside the header section:

• TextBox item for the report title

• TextBox item for the company title

• TextBox item for the report date

• TextBox item for the page number

• TextBox item for the product name heading

• TextBox item for the list price heading

• TextBox item for the cost price heading

• TextBox item for the profit amount heading

• TextBox item for the graph headingReport item properties are changed by right-clicking the report item and selecting Prop-erties or by accessing the general properties toolbox Let’s start changing the properties; after

selecting each of the text boxes, please specify the values for each according to Table 14-3

Table 14-3.Report Item Properties for the Header

textbox1

Value Product Profitability ReportFont Italic, Arial, 10pt, Boldtextbox2

Value AdventureWorks Inc

TextAlign Righttextbox3

Value = "Print Date: " & Todaytextbox4 —

— Value ="Page: " & Globals!PageNumber & "/" & Globals!TotalPages

Table 14-3.Continued

— Value Cost Price

Designing the Body Section

A table report item is the usual choice for tabular reports like this However, this time, I’ll showyou how you can use a list report item for a tabular format report Let’s start by draggingReport Items ➤List from the toolbox and dropping it inside the body section on the reportdesigner to add a new list item with the default name of list1 to the report

When you use a list item, all you get is a container into which you can drop other reportitems for the list Therefore, to display a list of products and prices, we need a text box insidethe newly added list As you did for this report header, drag and drop four text boxes insidelist1 Please make sure to align them according to their headings, which we already put in theheader section Your report design should look similar to the one shown in Figure 14-6

Figure 14-6.The report designer after adding the list and its text boxes

You’re probably wondering where the pie chart is Well, in the next section we are going toadd the pie chart First, let’s properly set all properties of the text boxes inside list1 Pleasemake sure all text box values match those in Table 14-4

Table 14-4.Text Box Values Inside list1

List Detail Textbox Value

Product Name =Fields!ProductName.Value

List Price =Fields!ListPrice.Value

Cost Price =Fields!CostPrice.Value

Profit Amount =Fields!ProfitAmount.Value

Add a Chart Report Item to list1

Adding chart items is easy and is the same as adding the text boxes So, let’s drag and drop a

chart item inside list1 The first time you drop the chart item, it will increase the size of the

Detail section, and it will have a Column type setting You can change the type by

right-clicking the chart item and selecting Chart Type ➤Pie ➤Simple Pie

We need both the List Price and Profit Amount columns’ data as plot data for our piechart Let’s start by dragging Data Source ➤dsProductProfit➤ListPrice from the toolbox

and dropping it at the “Drop data fields here” prompt Please repeat for the ProfitAmount

col-umn; make sure your report design surface looks like the one shown in Figure 14-7 after you

drop the plotting data on the chart item

Figure 14-7.The report designer after specifying plot data on the chart

When we add the chart item, the legend appears automatically For this report, we don’tneed the legend, as the size of chart is small We can hide the legend by right-clicking the chart

item and selecting Properties Next, select the Legend tab, uncheck “Show legend,” and click

OK to complete the process Please see Figure 14-8 for an illustration of these steps

Figure 14-8.Steps needed to hide the legend

The last step remaining in the report design is setting up the data grouping for list1.Why do we need grouping here? We need a data group for our chart item, because we areusing a data region inside the list report item (so RS needs the group expression) Each row

of data from the list will be passed, as a single item from the group, onto a chart for plotting

If you don’t set the group, you’ll get a run-time error saying, “The Chart chart1 is in a list thathas no group expression defined for it.” Adding a group to a List Item is simple; the steps areillustrated in Figure 14-9:

1. Right-click the list1 list item, and select Properties

2. Click the “Edit details group” button

3. In the Grouping and Sorting Properties dialog box, select the General tab In the

“Group on” section, select =Fields!ProductName.Value for the Expression

4. Click the OK button to finish the process, and click the OK button once more to closethe List Properties dialog box

Figure 14-9.Steps to add data grouping to a list item

Step 3: Writing the C# Code

Well, that’s all we need on the report design front Let’s add the following code behind

Form1.cs to get data and see if we managed to mimic the report:

InitializeComponent();

}

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e){

// connection stringstring cnString = @"Data Source=(local);➥

Initial Catalog=RealWorld;Integrated Security=SSPI;";

SqlConnection conReport = new SqlConnection(cnString);

SqlCommand cmdReport = new SqlCommand();

SqlDataReader drReport;

DataSet dsReport = new dsProductProfit();

try{// open connectionconReport.Open();

MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);

}

if (conReport.State == ConnectionState.Open){

conReport.Close();

}}}}}

The code in this example is similar to what you have seen in past chapters The only ference here is the SQL statement to connect to the table inside the real-world database

dif-Building the Project

You can click the small, green play button in the main toolbox or press F5 on the keyboard to

start the application in run-time mode As usual, if the program compiles without any errors,

you will see the form with the report in preview mode Please make sure the report looks

simi-lar to the one shown in Figure 14-1

Did you notice that each profit ratio is neatly present in graphical form? The pie chart hastwo sets of data plotted—the bigger the Profit Amount plot is, the better the chart looks, right?

After all, we do business to generate profit!

Developing a Report Using Report Wizard

One of the new features of the side reporting in VS 2008 is Report Wizard The

client-side Report Wizard works just like its server-client-side RS counterpart Both beginner and

profes-sional developers can benefit from this wizard For beginners, it is an easy tool to generate

reports and later study them Professional-level developers can use the wizard as a quick way

to generate a report based on a template and later change it to suit their needs

If I was in your seat, I’d be wondering how the wizard is invoked and how to use it To usethe wizard, you have to create a specific new project type, Reports Application project, which

will let you develop a report using Report Wizard This project type also creates a Windows

Forms client to test the report Now, let’s create a report in VS 2008 using Report Wizard

The Report Wizard in Action!

Please open VS 2008, and use the following steps, which are illustrated in Figure 14-10, to

cre-ate a Reports Application project:

1. Click File ➤New ➤Project, or press Ctrl+Shift+N

2. In the “Project types” pane of the New Project dialog box, select Visual C# ➤Database

3. In the Templates pane, select Reports Application