SSRS in Visual Studio 2008: Relative image paths?

Question

I have a header image that needs to be repeated in the header of multiple reports. I am aware that you can add an image to a report and point to a path where the image file reside, like file://C:\path\to\Reports\Images\logo.gif, but that path can and will change when the app is deployed.

I tried using a relative path like (assuming the reports are in the Reports/ folder) Images/logo.gif (or Images\logo.gif), but this just produces a broken image both in the designer and on the actual output. Is my syntax incorrect? If not, is there a way to do something like this?

EDIT: I also know about embedding an image into a report, but then this image would need to be embedded into every report, and if it needed to be changed, it would have to be changed individually in every report.

Answer 1

Store the path in a variable in your database, and only keep the field name for each image in your table. Put them together when running your app.

So, you'll have a table with images:

record1 otherdata image1.gif
record2 otherdata image2.gif

and another table that has system variables, including

imagepath  c:\path\to\reports\images\

Answer 2

We have dynamic header logos. We just store the images in the db, its easier this way. The logos are small enough they don't create much of a performance hit.

Image property on the Image control:

=First(Fields!BlobData.Value, "spimGetReportImg")

spimGetReportImg Dataset just calls the Stored Procedure we use to get the right image. IE:

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[spimGetReportImg]
@pk
AS 
BEGIN
SET NOCOUNT ON
SELECT b.BlobData
FROM   dbo.tblBlob b
WHERE  pkBlob = @pk

Answer 3

What we ended up doing was described in this blog post. We decided it was Good Enough of a solution, even if the path is, for now, hard-coded in there.