difference between microsoft report viewer and adobe pdf reader tools?

Question

i would like to display a pdf on my winform and am thinking of using of those tools in my vb.net application. does anyone know the difference between the two?

Answer 1

Microsoft Report Viewer reads report definition files and displays the report. Adobe's PDF reader displays PDF files.

Report definition files != PDF files, so you would need to make sure that you use the right tool for the right job. If you need to read PDFs, use a PDF reader.

As for consuming a PDF on a WinForm, you could host a WebBrowser control and point to the PDF. Alternately, there are several WinForm control manufacturers that read and display a PDF file (though I've not used any of them so would not be able to recommend one over another). Examples would be:

http://www.tallcomponents.com/
http://www.skysof.com/