Unplanned
Last Updated: 28 May 2019 07:04 by ADMIN
David
Created on: 14 Jun 2016 18:29
Type: Feature Request
15
report designer control
Why is it that the telerik report designer is locked down and cannot be used as a set of controls in a custom application as any other telerik control. We would like to use the report designer controls in an application we make to give it our look and feel and so we can give it the functionality we require. Why limit your customers by locking down your report designer. One of the great things about telerik is a great set of products and customer support. If we had a way to get at the Telerik.ReportDesigner.Core.dll we can figure our where the controls are and display them in our app. I don't understand the marketing behind the locked down report designer. How does it benefit your customers? You can still have a locked down designer for those customers that don't want to customize it. Providing access to Telerik.Reporting.Core.dll will give your customers the ability to customize the report designer to their needs. Telerik sells controls that customers use to make applications that they sell, so whats the difference with the designer? 
1 comment
David
Posted on: 15 Jun 2016 19:55
In addition to making the report designer fit our companies application look and feel there are other considerations to making the report designer into a set of controls.  If the report is put into a set of controls we can then support our xml format which would wrap the xml of the current report product. 

We have a special format for the sql so that we can support multiple dbms. In addition we have information about the version of the report and its creation date. This is used by our import and export tools we created for our reports. In order to support this we need to override Open and Save commands from the designer. 

This is why I suggested making the Telerik.Reports.Core.dll public. The designer, toolbox and explorer should be controls in that dll, These can then be used by any company to create their own version of the designer. Not all companies are using telerik reports by exposing this dll you show the ease that a company can move from their current report product to Telerik. If companies want to use Telerik's report designer as is they can still do that. So their is no loss there. 

The current license agreement says use as is, but I am laying out reasons to show that opening up the report designer benefits both your users and the users of companies that develop with your controls. Opening up Telerik.Reports.Core for use by developers makes it easier for companies to switch to Teleriks reporting product, and it makes a custom designer any company implements fit into their look and feel. I don't see the benefit to Telerik of locking down the Report Designer. Companies create reports that their end users utilize, and sometimes these need to be customized to the end users needs. Providing the locked down report designer means our end users need to learn Teleriks designer. Unlocking the designer means we can tailor the selection of one of our reports from our report dll, otherwise the end user has to select open from dll and go to where our report dll. These are unnecessary steps. for them to learn. We want to make our product easy to use. We want to use Telerik reports. Both things are done by opening up Telerik.Reporting.Core. 


Refer to support tickets 1043443 and 1043437.