Aspose.Cells for Reporting Services mainly contains two components: Aspose.Cells.Report.Designer and Aspose.Cells.Renderer for Reporting Services. The former is used to design report in MS Excel directly and the latter is responsible for rendering a RDL report to MS Excel.
The main steps to design a report using Aspose.Cells.Report.Designer are summarized as following.
- Create data sources and queries. MS Query is integrated with Aspose.Cells.Report.Designer and used as a graphic tool to create data sources and queries. Users can also make use of an existing RDL file in which data sources and queries are available for operations.
- If the SQL statements of a query include parameters, Users have to create report parameters and map SQL parameters to report parameters. Users can designate the valid values for a report parameter in Aspose.Cells.Report.Designer.
- Design MS Excel report template contents, styles and formats. Aspose.Cells report template may contain any number of the following types of report items.
- Table
- Pivot table
- Chart
- Textbox
Normally query (i.e., DataSet) is used as a data source for report item. Users may also use Reporting Services parameters, formulas and global variables as a data source for some types of report items. The styles and formats of report items are specified simply by setting the styles and formats of Cells that compose the report items.
- Publish report
After having completed the work listed above the report is ready for publish. Users can designate which folder the report will be published to. If needed, Users can also assign a shared data source on Report server as the data source for the report.
- Preview report
While selecting a report on Report Server for preview, a user is prompted to specify the exported file format (for example --- MS Excel 97-2003 binary XLS format, SpreadsheetML or MS Excel2007 XLSX format) and input report parameters that are created in step 2. After this, the report is populated with data supplied by Reporting Services.