Paramaters

Hi, we run an ASP.NET portal that has fairly extensive reporting needs (it's
a government portal...) We're thinking of switching to reporting services
from a custom xml/xsl solution. My questions are:
1. interfacing with RS from our existing .net web app. We have screens set
up to let the user do things like select paramaters and stuff. Can this be
integrated? Currently for things that require multiple selections (for
instance, selecting a set of cities to report on), we build a string of city
ids (eg. 1,3,45,60,61) that gets passed into a stored procedure, which uses
the string to select info on each city (using IN(1,3,45,60,61)). Is this
possible in RS, and can we use our existing frontend? If we use our existing
frontend, can we still have access to the toolbar, for things like exporting
to different formats?
2. I know dynamic fields aren't possible. But can fields be left out /
included based on the presence of data to fill it?
3. Is it possible to use XML as a datasource to a report?
If anyone has any insight into these, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in
advance
Peter LRS has two ways to integrate an existing app. You can either use web
services or you can use URL integration. To be able to have the toolbar you
need to use the URL integration. What you want to do with #1 is very easy to
do using URL integration. For question number 2, whether something is
visible can be set with an expression. The expression can decide not to show
it based on whatever you choose. #3 is possible but a little more difficult.
It is possible to create your own data extension. I suggest first seeing if
you really need to do this or if you can just use the stored procedures
and/or queries instead.
--
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"plandry@.newsgroups.nospam"
<plandrynewsgroupsnospam@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:CF96A1DF-84CA-4136-BCF4-9AF3BBC345CF@.microsoft.com...
> Hi, we run an ASP.NET portal that has fairly extensive reporting needs
> (it's
> a government portal...) We're thinking of switching to reporting services
> from a custom xml/xsl solution. My questions are:
> 1. interfacing with RS from our existing .net web app. We have screens set
> up to let the user do things like select paramaters and stuff. Can this be
> integrated? Currently for things that require multiple selections (for
> instance, selecting a set of cities to report on), we build a string of
> city
> ids (eg. 1,3,45,60,61) that gets passed into a stored procedure, which
> uses
> the string to select info on each city (using IN(1,3,45,60,61)). Is this
> possible in RS, and can we use our existing frontend? If we use our
> existing
> frontend, can we still have access to the toolbar, for things like
> exporting
> to different formats?
> 2. I know dynamic fields aren't possible. But can fields be left out /
> included based on the presence of data to fill it?
> 3. Is it possible to use XML as a datasource to a report?
>
> If anyone has any insight into these, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks in
> advance
> Peter L