Unplanned
Last Updated: 28 Jun 2024 14:01 by ADMIN
David
Created on: 23 Jun 2024 11:47
Type: Feature Request
1
Allow Automatic Report Parameter Creation when secondary SharedDataSource is used

Reports designed in Blazor Web Designer may have multiple shared data sources, only one of which can be used to bind details section data. That I understand.

A use of a secondary data source can be to provide data to which Report Parameters can be bound, such as providing dynamic localized values for any language and/or region. This I expect to do in every report of mine.

Right now, unless I've overlooked some existing mechanism, in each and every report for each field in such a secondary data source I have to manually create a new Report Parameter, bind it to the desired data source, and at least set the ValueMember to that data source field. This can be very time consuming, especially if there are a large number to be created.

It would seem possible for you to add a data source feature such that use of that data source in a report automatically does this for me for each selected field in the Select Query. That would save me a tremendous amount of design time!

Also, if you reply to this, perhaps you could tell me what constitutes a report's "Inline Data Source"? I have been unable to locate any discussion in your documentation nor any means to actually create one if that were useful to me.

1 comment
ADMIN
Dimitar
Posted on: 28 Jun 2024 14:01

Hello David,

Thank you for the provided information!

My understanding of this feature request is that you would like to be able to automatically create a collection of report parameters based on the schema of the data returned by a data source component, where each report parameter corresponds to one of the fields and the values are available for selection in the report parameter widget that will be created on the client, is that correct?

This is a valid request and we have decided to approve it. With that being said, I would like to mention that through code, it may be possible to also automate the process since we provide APIs for editing the report definition:

When the feature is implemented in the Web Report Designer, behind the scenes we will likely be using the already existing APIs to do so.

Regarding the question about the "Inline Data Sources", such data sources would be the ones that are serialized in the report definition. For example, when one creates a SqlDataSource in the report and saves it, it will be part of the XML definition of the report. Each TRDP file is a zip archive and by opening it, inside you will find a definition.xml which will contain the XML code for the inline SqlDataSource.

On the other hand, if that SqlDataSource component is wrapped in a SharedDataSource component, the XML won't be saved in the definition of the report, and instead a separate SDSX file which represents the SharedDataSource component will be created and its content will be the XML of the SqlDataSource component. The SharedDataSource component being a separate file is what allows it to be shared across many report definitions since all the engine needs to do is read the content of the file at runtime from the given path.

Please let us know if you have any additional feedback or questions.

Regards,
Dimitar
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