When to use RDLC over RDL reports

Question

I have been studying SSRS 2005   2008 in the past weeks and have created some server side reports  For some application  a colleague suggested that I look into RDLC for that particular situation  I am now trying to get my head around the main difference between RDL and RDLC    Searching for this information yields fragmented information at best  I have learned that    RDLC reports do not store information about how to get data  RDLC reports can be executed directly by the ReportViewer control    But I still don t fully understand the relation between the RDLC file and the other related systems  the Reporting Server  the source database  the client     In order to get a good grasp on RDLC files  I would like to know how their use differs from RDL files and in what situation one would choose RDLC over RDL  Links to resources are also welcome    Update   A thread on the ASP NET forums discusses this same issue  From it  I have gained some better understanding on the issue   A feature of RDLC is that it can be run completely client-side in the ReportViewer control     This removes the need for a Reporting Services instance  and even removes the need for any database connection whatsoever  but  It adds the requirement that the data that is needed in the report has to be provided manually     Whether this is an advantage or a disadvantage depends on the particular application    In my application  an instance of Reporting Services is available anyway and the required data for the reports can easily be pulled from a database  Is there any reason left for me to consider RDLC  or should I simply stick with RDL

User · Answer

Some of these points have been addressed above, but here's my 2-cents for VS2008 environment.

RDL (Remote reports): Much better development experience, more flexibility if you need to use some advanced features like scheduling, ad-hoc reporting, etc...

RDLC (Local reports): Better control over the data before sending it to the report (easier to validate or manipulate the data prior to sending it to the report). Much easier deployment, no need for an instance of Reporting Services.

One HUGE caveat with local reports is a known memory leak that can severely affect performance if your clients will be running numerous large reports. This is supposed to be addressed with the new VS2010 version of the report viewer.

In my case, since we have an instance of Reporting Services available, I develop new reports as RDLs and then convert them to local reports (which is easy) and deploy them as local reports.

User · Answer

If you have a reporting services infrastructure available to you  use it   You will find RDL development to be a bit more pleasant   You can preview the report  easily setup parameters  etc

User · Answer

From my experience there are few things to think about both things   I  RDL reports are HOSTED reports generally   This means you need to implement SSRS Server   They are a built in extension of Visual Studio from SQL Server for the reporting language   When you install SSRS you should have an add on called  Business Intelligence Development Studio  which is much easier to work with the reports than without it    R eport   D efinition  L angauge  Benefits of RDL reports    You can host the reports in an environment that has services running for you on them  You can configure security on an item or inheriting level to handle security as a standalone concept You can configure the service to send out emails provided you have an SMTP server you have access to  and save files on schedules You have a database generally called  ReportServer  you can query for info on the reports once published  You can access these reports still through  ReportViewer  in a client application written in ASP NET  WPF  with a winform control bleh    or Winforms in  NET using  ProcessingMode Remote   You can set parameters a user can see and use to gain more flexibility  You can configure parts of a report to be used for connection strings as  Data Sources  as well as a sql query  xml  or other datasets as a  Dataset    These parts and others can be stored and configured to cache data on a regular basis  You can write  NET proxy classes of the services http     ReportServer ReportingService2010 or  ReportExecution2005   You can then make up your OWN methods in  NET for emailing  saving  or manipulating SSRS data from the service directly of a Server hosting SSRS reports in code  Programmatically Export SSRS report from sharepoint using ReportService2010 asmx   Downsides    SSRS is kind of wonkey compared to other things on getting it up fast   Most people get confused by the security policy and designing reports as an  add on  to VS   SQL 2005   VS BIDS 2005   SQL 2008   VS BIDS 2008  SQL 2012   VS BIDS 2010 LOL   Continuing on 1 the policy for security settings IMHO are idiotically overcomplex   There is server security  database security and roles  two security settings on the page hosted for the service   Most people only set up an admin than can t get in and wonder why other users cannot   Most common complaint or question on SSRS is related to getting in generally from my experience  You can use  expressions  that will supposeduly  enhance  your report   Often times you do more than a few and your report goes to a crawl in performance  You have a set amount of things you can do and export to   SSRS has no hover over reporting I know of without a javascript hack  Speed and performance can take a hit as the stupid SSRS config recycles the system and a first report can take a while at times just loading the site   You can get around this by altering it but I have found making a keep alive service for it works better    II  RDLC reports are CLIENT CONTAINED reports that are NOT HOSTED ANYWHERE   The extra c in the name means  Client    Generally this is an extension of the RDL language meant for use only in Visual Studio Client Applications   It exists in Visual Studio when you add a  reporting  item   Benefits of RDLC reports    You can hookup a wcf service much much much more easier to the dataset  You have more control over the dataset and can use POCO classes filled with Entity framework objects or ADO NET directly as well as tables themselves   You can monkey with the data for optimization it before binding it to the report  You can customize the look more with add on s directly in code behind    Downsides    You need to handle parameters on your own and while you can implement wrapper methods to help the legwork is a little more than expected and unfortunate  The user cannot SEE the parameters in a  ReportViewer  control unless it is in remote mode and accessing an RLD report   Thus you need to make textboxes  dropdowns  radio buttons on your own outside the control to pass to it   Some people like this added control  I do not personally  Anything you want to do with servicing the reports for distribution you need to build yourself   Emailing  subscriptions  saving   Sorry you need to build that in  NET or else implement a proxy that already does that from above you could just be getting using hosted reports    Honestly I like both for different purposes   If I want something to go out to analysts that they use all the time and tweak for graphs  charts  drill downs and exports to Excel I use RDL and just have SSRS s site do all the legwork of handling the email distributions   If I want an application that has a report section and I know that application is it s own module with rules and governance I use an RDLC and having the parameters be smaller and be driven by the decisions the user made before getting to the report part of what client they are on and site and then they usually just choose a time frame or type and nothing more   So generally a complex report I would use RDL and for something simple I would use RDLC IMHO   I hope that helps

User · Answer

Q  What is the difference between RDL and RDLC formats       A  RDL files are created by the SQL   Server 2005 version of Report   Designer  RDLC files are created by   the Visual Studio 2008 version of   Report Designer       RDL and RDLC formats have the same XML   schema  However  in RDLC files  some   values  such as query text  are   allowed to be empty  which means that   they are not immediately ready to be   published to a Report Server  The   missing values can be entered by   opening the RDLC file using the SQL   Server 2005 version of Report   Designer   You have to rename  rdlc to    rdl first        RDL files are fully compatible with   the ReportViewer control runtime    However  RDL files do not contain some   information that the design-time of   the ReportViewer control depends on   for automatically generating   data-binding code  By manually binding   data  RDL files can be used in the   ReportViewer control  New  See also   the RDL Viewer sample program       Note that the ReportViewer control   does not contain any logic for   connecting to databases or executing   queries  By separating out such logic    the ReportViewer has been made   compatible with all data sources    including non-database data sources    However this means that when an RDL   file is used by the ReportViewer   control  the SQL related information   in the RDL file is simply ignored by   the control  It is the host   application s responsibility to   connect to databases  execute queries   and supply data to the ReportViewer   control in the form of ADO NET   DataTables    http   www gotreportviewer com

User · Answer

If we have fewer number of reports which are less complex and consumed by asp net web pages  It s better to go with rdlc reason is we can avoid maintaing reports on RS instance  but we have to fetch the data from DB manually and bind it to rdlc   Cons designing rdlc in visual studio is little difficult compared to SSrs designer   Pro Maintenance is easy  while exporting the report from we page observed that performance gain compared to server side reports

User · Answer

While I currently lean toward RDL because it seems more flexible and easier to manage  RDLC has an advantage in that it seems to simplify your licensing    Because RDLC doesn   t need a Reporting Services instance  you won t need a Reporting Services License to use it   I   m not sure if this still applies with the newer versions of SQL Server  but at one time if you chose to put the SQL Server Database and Reporting Services instances on two separate machines  you were required to have two separate SQL Server licenses  http   social msdn microsoft com forums en-US sqlgetstarted thread 82dd5acd-9427-4f64-aea6-511f09aac406   You can Bing for other similar blogs and posts regarding Reporting Services licensing

User · Answer

I have always thought the different between RDL and RDLC is that RDL are used for SQL Server Reporting Services and RDLC are used in Visual Studio for client side reporting  The implemenation and editor are almost identical  RDL stands for Report Defintion Language and RDLC Report Definition Language Client-side   I hope that helps

User · Answer

if you want to use report in asp net then use  rdl if you want to use  view in report builder   report server then use  rdlc just by converting format manually  it works

User · Answer

For VS2008  I believe RDL gives you better editing features than RDLC  For example  I can change the Bold on a selected amount of text in a textbox with RDL  while in RDLC it s is not possible   RDL  abcd efgh ijklmnop  RDLC  abcd efgh ijklmnop -or- abcd efgh ijklmnop  are your only options   This is because RDLC is using a earlier namespace formatting from 2005  while RDL is using 2008  This however will change with VS2010

User · Answer

From my experience  if you need high performance  this does depend slightly on your client specs  on large reports  go with rdlc   Additionally  rdlc reports give you a very full range of control over your data  you may be able to save yourself wasted database trips  etc  by using client side reports   On the project I m currently working on  a critical report requires about 2 minutes to render on the server side  and pretty much takes out whichever reporting server it hits for that time   Switching it to client side rendering  we see performance much closer to 20-40 seconds with no load on the report server and less bandwidth used because only the datasets are being downloaded   Your mileage may vary  and I find rdlc s add development and maintenance complexity  especially when your report has been designed as a server side report

[reporting-services] When to use RDLC over RDL reports?

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