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I would like to hear from anybody who knows any 3rd party components that can consume a RDL file and produce a HTML rendering. The rendering should happen without any dependency on Reporting Services being installed on the back end.

I know of ActiveReports 7, however I do not think they are supporting the latest RDL schema .

Thanks and regards, Saurabh

sdg
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I wrote an article about how to render an RDL/RDLC on IIS without SSRS. It comes with all the free code that you would need. I could paste it all here, but it is a lot of code. Here are the highlights: a RDL/RDLC file is simply XML. The ASP.NET report control can run the report (without SSRS) but it requires some weird stuff to wrap the queries. My strategy was to pull the query out of the XML (using XPath) and get any parameters and grab those via a query. Then I use the query(s) to populate a dataset and I use it as a data source. Pretty 101, when you think about it. The article also refers to other articles that show how to generate a PDF (etc) without having to view the report first. It sounds like exactly the stuff that you would need, but it uses the control that comes with asp.net: http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/607382/Running-an-RDLC-SQL-Report-in-ASP-NET-without-SSRS

tgolisch
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  • Thank you Tim. Looking at this now. – sdg Nov 14 '13 at 13:48
  • Ok. I was able to get your code to work with some minor modifications. I added logic to pull the connection string out of the RDL file. – sdg Nov 14 '13 at 14:43
  • I like your approach you have taken to render RDL files using out of box ASP.NET Reportviewer control. What are the caveats in this approach? (all my reports are built using SQL Server) – sdg Nov 14 '13 at 14:48
  • The caveat is that this is version dependent. If Microsoft changes the file format (RDL or RDLC), this might need revisions. Also, it is dependent on SQL DB for a data source, but could be modified to accomodate other DBs. It is designed to work with simple reports. More complex ones will require additional R&D. I would be glad to work with you on something like that in trade for sample-code. Also, I've never tried it with huge data sets. Again, it might require R&D to get it to work nicely with huge result sets. – tgolisch Nov 14 '13 at 15:27
  • Oh yeah. Also, like all open-source stuff, your options for support might be limited (meaning that you are your primary support person) but since you have the code, you are enabled. If you bought a control, the vendor might have talented people/consultants to assist you with problems (then again, maybe they don't. Just sayin'). – tgolisch Nov 14 '13 at 15:30
  • Btw, if you find the code useful, I would be thankful if you could give me a few stars on the codeproject article. It helps others find solutions like mine and encourages others to make similar (maybe better) articles. – tgolisch Nov 14 '13 at 15:39
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    Voted on CP. I will hang on to this question for some more time to see if there is anybody in the community might have some other ideas. Cheers. – sdg Nov 14 '13 at 16:11
  • Hi Tim,Have you ever pondered taking forward the work you have done on CodeProject and extend into a full blown community project on CodePlex? I am sure there are many who have felt a need to display RDL reports in their custom web apps without the full blown installation of the Report Server. Happy to collaborate. – sdg Nov 19 '13 at 12:15