Asp.net Microsoft ReportViewer using rdlc page never loads

Question

I have installed the Visual Studio 2008 sp1 Report Viewer Redistributable on the web server. I had to download it from microsoft, because the location I've seen other people post does not exist on my install of visual studio. I downloaded the one that is located here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BB196D5D-76C2-4A0E-9458-267D22B6AAC6&displaylang=en.

I think the location people say ReportViewer.exe is in, is usualy: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\SDK\v2.0\BootStrapper\Packages\ReportViewer\ReportViewer.exe. I have Visual Studio Team Suite Development Edition 2008 and the v2.0 directory under SDK does not exist. That may be some of my problem, I do not think so though.

I say all that to say that I can design the Microsoft Report, and I can run the page with the report viewer locally just fine. It seems to work really great, and could help out the company quite a bit.

However when I deploy to the webserver the page that host the reportviewer control will allways either say "This page does not have a precompiled..", or something like that. It usualy doesn't say anything and just sits there trying to load.

Other pages in the same website do not exhibit these symptoms. I have also successfully gotten crystal reports to display it's viewer, by installing the redistributable on the web server.

Answer 1

There must be something going on with one of our web servers. I finally got the report to load and it came up with an error message that said the same thing that this forum post talks about http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vsreportcontrols/thread/b237dbab-7670-4c7a-b9af-70c5be7101d9.

I was then able to check the box that says allow precompiled site to be updatable. That fixed my issue. I now have both crystal and microsoft reports working correctly. Maybe this post will help someone else.

edit 2/18/2010 8:18am cst I thought it was fixed apparently not, as soon as I published to the web server again, the page will not load anymore. I am going to try and setup a completely new server in a virtual machine, to try and do more testing.

edit 2/19/2010 8:17am cst I spent alot of yesterday setting up a brand new virtual machine with server 2003, visual studio 2008, and sql 2005. I ran the same report page, all it has on it is the report viewer control. It still will not load. I figure there is something you have to do with IIS configuration to get it to work, since it won't load with default settings.

edit 2/19/2010 9:47am cst I have created a new web application with only the report in it, brand new web.config file. Something about my web.config file is causing the problem. This new web application is apparently working. I am now going to try and see if any new pages can be added to the previous web app at all. Maybe something is causing all new pages to not load.

edit 2/19/2010 10:12am cst Bizarrely the report sometimes loads. This happens on both the test environment, and the production environment. I did find a somewhat funny angry bug report to microsoft that explains the problem with the rdlc files compiling. That is what produces the following error: **

An error occurred during local report processing.
     The definition of the report 'Main Report' is invalid.
     The report definition is not valid. Details: Data at the root level is invalid. Line 1, position 1.

** The Bug report url: http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/468068/rdlc-files-are-build-into-resources-during-publish-this-is-a-marker-file
The blog post url that fixes it: http://weblogs.asp.net/stephensonger/archive/2008/09/10/deploying-rdlc-files-in-local-mode-for-asp-net-applications.aspx
As you can tell, possibly you don't find it funny, but there is a bug that causes rdlc files to compile for some reason. You can also fix it by having your site be updatable, which is one of the check boxes you can check when you publish in visual studio.

edit 2/19/2010 10:51am cst My next step is to snapshot the current virtual machine, go back to the point I installed sql 2005. At that point I'll install visual studio 2010 rc and see if it exhibits the same problem.

edit 3/3/2010 9:15am cst I don't know what fixed it, but both crystal and microsoft reports have been displaying correctly for awhile now. I made no changes other than what I have mentioned here.