I can open my Enterprise Architect 12 project file in Access 2010, but it tells me that need some older version in order to edit the schema. With Access 2010 I can only view the schema and edit the data. I would like to do that because I have some hope, that if I change the schema I might get around the possible bug described in this question posted by myself.
EA uses standard Jet 3.5.
I'm pretty sure you can edit it with MS Access 97 as this MS KB article suggests.
You could upgrade to Jet 4.0 as well. In that case you need to set the option to use Jet 4.0 in the Tools|Options section, and download the Jet 4.0 EAbase.eap file from the Sparx Systems website.
AFAIK you can edit Jet 4.0 with more recent versions of MS Access.
All this said, I doubt changing the database structure will solve the issue you are having, and I think its a bad idea in general.
We have Forms application created in Oracle Forms Builder version 9.0.4.0.19.
We have done modification in some forms and few forms created using Oracle Forms Builder 10g version 10.1.2.0.2.
Now we need to convert those forms which are around 5 or 6 in number to Oracle Forms 9.
Please suggest me how do i do that.
Thanks
Sujit
I don't have a copy of Forms developer 10g or 9i so this answer has not been tested.
Have you tried converting the Forms created in Forms 10g into XML using the supplied Oracle tools? Once you have the XML incarnation of your Form you may be able to convert it back into an Oracle Form 9i .fmb file.
However I am sure that even if this works, Oracle only support "forward", i.e. 9 to 10 upgrades so if yo start getting strange errors you will be on your own! Myself, I would do the changes from the begining in the lower version.
I'm new to SSRS and I've been using Report Builder to create reports. But I understand Visual Studio is a better environment and/or would like to use BIDS -- problem is, I cannot find our SQL server DVD or key (which I assume I need for something), but I would like to know if I can at least use Visual Studio Standard on my PC to create reports and publish them to SSRS?
Thanks
Yes you can.
BIDS is a Visual Studio plug-in.
Broad question is: Is there anything Telerik Reporting can do that SSRS (2005) cannot?
Specifics: We're looking to migrate our current Reporting infrastructure from in-house ASP.NET + Crystal (VS Edition) to something else.
Ignoring the cost factor (we have a Telerik license), is there any pros or cons to going with Telerik over SSRS?
Key elements we need are:
generate reports from a custom ASP.NET application
schedule reports
email reports on demand or on a schedule
pdf output, drilldown html
massage the dataset in C# before passing it to the rendering engine
Any experiences or sites that point out advantages or limitations (with either engine) would be greatly appreciated.
SSRS is a server-based reporting system whereas Telerik Reporting is purely an embedded reporting tool. You should compare Telerik Reporting to SSRS ReportViewer control in local processing mode, not the whole SSRS system, unless you intend to use the SSRS server too. I think this is the first question to answer: you should evaluate the pros and cons of using a report server.
The usual reason of choosing embedded reporting is to avoid a server dependency. If you are an application developer and deploy your application to multiple sites, you would have to support multiple SSRS installation in addition to your application. Telerik reports compile to a dll that you can deploy with your application easily.
Generally, server-based SSRS is more feature-rich than Telerik reporting, especially the SSRS 2008 tablix is handy. I think that Telerik Reporting has supported crosstabs only from Q1 2009. It does not support interactive features like drilldown. You should see the known limitations of Telerik reporting and also the substantial improvements in SSRS 2008 compared to SSRS 2005. On the other hand, ReportViewer in local mode understands RDL 2005 only, so you are limited to SSRS 2005 features.
Now, it is easier to look at your requirements.
Generating reports from a custom ASP.NET application
SSRS Server: Microsoft ReportViewer web control configured for remote processing views the reports processed and rendered by an SSRS server
SSRS local mode: Microsoft ReportViewer processes and renders the local RDL 2005 report definitions
Telerik: Telerik ReportViewer processes and renders reports. Reports can be deployed as a single dll with all the resources (images etc.) embedded. This is the strong point of Telerik reporting.
Scheduling reports
SSRS: Server-side feature, not supported in local mode
Telerik : Not supported
Email reports on demand or on a schedule
SSRS : Server-side feature, not supported in local mode
Telerik: Not supported
Pdf output
SSRS: Various output formats in server mode. In local mode, ReportViewer supports only Excel and PDF
Telerik: Various output formats, including pdf
Drilldown html
SSRS Server: Drilldown to a subreport (another RDL report definition) with parameter passing, static urls in report elements
SSRS local mode: Static urls but no interactive features
Telerik: Static urls but no interactive features
Massage the dataset in C# before passing it to the rendering engine
SSRS Server: Supports report datasets defined in RDL, OLEDB compatible
data sources, XML data, Integration Services packages and standard .NET providers
SSRS local mode: This quote is directly from Lachev's book (p.525):
ReportViewer supports two types of
data sources in local processing mode:
a dataset that contains an ADO.NET
DataTable object or an enumerable
collection of business objects.
ReportViewer Windows Forms also
supports binding to instances of
System.Windows.Forms.BindingSource and
to System.Type. Report Viewer Web
server supports binding to an instance
of System.Web.UI.IDataSource.
Telerik: any DataSet or DataView can be set as a datasource at runtime
Given your key elements, and assuming that you are doing internal reporting inside a corporate firewall, I'd definitely recommend using an SSRS server. Try to get one SQL Server 2008 licence or use SQL 2008 Express as a reporting server. But if you absolutely have to use embedded reporting, Telerik is probably a better choice, at least until Microsoft ReportViewer supports RDL 2008 in local mode. This new ReportViewer should be shipped with Visual Studio 2010.
For SSRS, I recommend reading Teo Lachev's Applied Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services. Sample chapters are available at the book's site the and in Google Books.
Telerik Reporting has excellent support too. Developing Telerik reports relies heavily on samples and support forums.
I have also written blog posts on embedded reporting and Telerik Reporting in particular.
Just adding to mika's reply regarding Telerik interactivity:
Their reporting now offers a few interactivity features, namely navigating to a subreport (drill-through), navigate to a bookmark, and navigate to URL. Their current roadmap mentions that they will add interactive sorting and drill-down by the end of 2011. These should bring their reporting product much closer to SSRS in this regard.
I want to add some new information about Telerik's solution.
Some of the things that were previously not supported, such as Scheduling reports and Email reports on demand or on a schedule are now available as part of the Telerik Report Server product. The Report Server comes with the Report Designer mentioned above. More information about if is available here.
One of the main reasons we stopped using SSRS and went with Telerik is because Telerik has much better support across browsers. Naturally, one would not expect MS to provide equal support for a rival product when it comes to browser compatibility.
Since you are planning one doing a web based application this may be a factor.
I first started using Telerik reporting version 2010 Q2 and never had an issue linking reports over a web app to provide drill-down or linking functionality. It was quite simple and intuitive.
Another thing to think about is that SSRS report files which are RDL files, whereas a Telerik report is compiled into your app. If you need to change your report you'll need to recompile and redeploy your app. For RDL files, you simply upload them to the SSRS server. I still prefer Telerik though, even though it means a slightly longer SDLC for a change request.
Another thing that grinds my noodle is that as long as we used SSRS we had to have both VS 2008 and 2010 installed, because VS 2010 does not have support for designing RDL reports like 2008 has (BIDS is basically a scaled down version of VS 2008: Visual Studio 2010 Reporting Services Projects? )
With Telerik we can stick to using VS 2010.
Comment on "Telerik Reporting has excellent support too. Developing Telerik reports relies heavily on samples and support forums.":
No. You're making an assumption. I have created many complex reports without needing any direction from forums/sample/etc - its a very intuitive tool. I am sure there are many developers out there who have been able to do just fine without "heavy" reliance on the forums/samples - its not rocket science, it's cake.
SSRS Local mode is not supported in Azure.
In the latest versions Telerik Reporting have Report Designer that is tool like Report Builder and the report viewer support XML report definitions (trdx). So no compiling is required if you change the reports.
I found this extremely old document which appears to say that many of the web client features are not availiable when running on express edition--scheduling, subscription, etc--as well as no access to the report builder. Is that information still current, and are there any other features which are unavailable?
Subscriptions and scheduling are indeed absent in both MSSQLEx2005 and MSSQLEx2008, but I have never found this to be much of a problem. The underlying platform has a scheduler and the web service will do all the rendering, so you can recreate the missing elements without too much trouble.
The report builder is also absent, and this is non-trivial to replicate. You could always install SQLEx locally and let them use BIDS. Or you could stop being cheap. It's pretty good for free.
I recommend you use SSRS2008 rather than 2005 because it no longer requires IIS, and there are several sexy new capabilities in the report engine. In particular it now supports flow-based rich text with inline fields for mail-merge type reports.
Compatibility is excellent but some applications reject a newer database engine version. If this is a problem, continue to use SQLExpr2005 for the database.
So, are you saying that A) SSRS 2005
requires IIS whereas 2008 does not,
and that B) SSRS2008 is backwards
compatible with a SQL2005 database?
(It sounds like you might be saying
that SSRS 2008 could be used with
somebody running 2005 DBs
Yes, I am indeed saying that
SSRS 2005 requires IIS whereas 2008 does not
SSRS 2008 is backwards compatible with a SQL2005 database
SSRS 2008 could be used with somebody running 2005 DBs, or even 2000 DBs.
You can use SSRS with any database server for which ADO.NET drivers are available, including Oracle and MySQL.
I've caught somewhere the idea about rich text in SSRS 2008.
As I see it will allow me to make such static text
"Some test with some text in bold and some italic text"
with a single text box which was impossible in RS 2005. (even don't know good way to make it there)
You wrote it doesn't require SQL Server 2008 to be installed.
What about IDE for reports development ?
Looking forward with big hopes for SSRS 2008,
thanks for attention in advance,
Alex