Creating Reports using VS 2008

Question

How do I create a report (RDL file) using VS 2008. I created one and it created a rdlc file which I cannot publish it to reporting server. I do not want to convert rdlc file to a rdl file.

Answer 1

In order to create RDL (server-based) reports in Visual Studio 2008, you need to:

• install the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) components from SQL Server 2008 (or possibly 2005)
• create a new Reporting project in VS 2008 (File -> New -> Project, then under Business Intelligence Projects pick the Report Server Project)

• add at least one report to your Reporting project, designing it in BIDS inside Visual Studio (right-click on the Reports folder in your Solution Explorer and choose Add New Report)

• deploy that report (or those reports) to a Reporting Services 2008 server (either from within Visual Studio directly, using Deploy on your report project, or by other means)

Answer 2

Business intelligence Design Studio (BIDS) will add to an existing version of Visual Studio. If you don't have Visual Studio installed, it installs the core IDE & adds its bits to it.

It does mean you have to use the right version, which is really annoying. So if you use VS2008, you can only add SQL Server Reporting 2008 to it, which obviously only works for that version of SQL Server.

To create reports for SQL Server 2005, you need Visual Studio 2005, which will be installed as parts of BIDS.

It'll all get worse when Visual Studio 2010 comes out.