Report Service
- 2 minutes to read
This document describes tools used to create reporting applications with DevExpress, based on the client-server model. This approach employs a server (“application back end”) that hosts a report generating service, and a set of client (“front end”) applications that receive and publish created documents, by implementing a WCF service.
Tip
Consider choosing the DevExpress Report Server - a stand-alone multi-user client-server solution providing advanced mechanisms for management, scheduling, and distribution of reports and dashboards out of the box.
The report service is the part of the DevExpress document service model intended for maintaining reports on the server side of an application. The report service connects exclusively to the database, stores report definitions, and generates and delivers documents based on the requests received from its clients.
The ReportService class descendant is a WCF (Windows Communication Foundation) service. A report service implements the IReportService interface that provides the WCF service contract.
The report service allows you to manage the progress of remote document service operations (such as document generation, printing, exporting, editing and storing). The report service client calls these operations asynchronously and generates a corresponding event after an operation is complete. To customize the report service operation, you can override methods of the ReportService class.
Typically, a report service is hosted by a web application. To add a report service to a web application in Visual Studio, do the following.
Switch to the Solution Explorer and right-click the web application project item. In the invoked context menu, select Add | New Item.
In the invoked Add New Item dialog, expand the Web category, select DevExpress 21.2 Report Service and click Add.
After a report service is added to the application, its configurations are automatically added to the system.serviceModel section of the Web.config file.
- To create a report service client, call the ReportServiceClientFactory.Create method of the previously created ReportServiceClientFactory.
For an example of how to use a report service as a remote document source in a Windows Forms application, refer to How to: Preview, Export and Print a Remotely Created Document.