Using Custom .NET Code with Reports

Abstract

SSRS 2008 offers software developers a variety of options when it comes to customizing reports through code. These options give software developers the ability to write custom functions using .NET code that can interact with report fields, parameters, and filters in much the same way as any of the built-in functions. To give just two examples, you can create a custom function that does the following: Implements a business rule and returns true or false based on the logic: You can use such a function as part of an expression to change the value or style of a field based on the fields or parameters passed to the function. Reads data from sources not otherwise available to SSRS 2008 directly: You can do this by having your custom code read data directly from the source. In this chapter, you will examine how to read data from an XML file. The sample code for this chapter also includes an example of reading data from a Web service. Although we won’t cover it in this chapter, with SSRS 2008 you can also create custom extensions that will allow you to view data in the Report Designer as a data source.