Reports V2 Module Overview
- 4 minutes to read
Reports are widely used in business applications to present data in human-readable and printer-friendly formats. The Reports V2 module is introduced to simplify the integration of DevExpress Reporting into XAF applications. Note that WinForms and ASP.NET XAF applications are standard .NET applications, and the approaches described in the GUI and Web Reporting tutorials are fully applicable, but you need to create a user interface for reports access and implement a storage for user-defined reports manually. The Reports V2 module provides ready-to-use solutions for these tasks, which cover the most popular scenarios.
With the Reports V2 module, reports are represented by business objects that are stored with other persistent objects in the application database. A list of included reports (both predefined in Visual Studio and added by end-users) is displayed in the Reports List View, which can be invoked from the Reports navigation item. The Reports View is accompanied by the Actions used to manage reports (create, design, print, copy, etc.). Reports can also be executed from a business object context - you can select several objects and then use the ShowInReport Action to display these objects in a report.
Note
If the solutions provided by the Reports V2 module are not applicable in your particular scenario, feel free to integrate XtraReports in a custom way (see How to: Show an XtraReport created at design time, without the use of XAF Reports module).
Reports V2 Capabilities
WinForms and ASP.NET specific module
- Create, preview and print end-user reports at runtime and persist these reports in the database.
- Preview and print predefined reports designed by the developer in Visual Studio.
- Use predefined reports as templates for creating end-user reports.
Mobile specific module
Preview and save on mobile device predefined reports designed by the developer in Visual Studio or reports created by end-users at runtime in the WinForms or ASP.NET application.
DevExpress Controls Used by the ReportsV2 Module
- XRDesignForm - used to design reports in WinForms (when the IModelOptionsWin.FormStyle property is set to Standard).
- XRDesignRibbonForm - used to design reports in WinForms (when the IModelOptionsWin.FormStyle property is set to Ribbon).
- ReportPrintTool - used to preview and print reports in WinForms applications.
- ASPxReportDesigner - used to design reports in ASP.NET applications.
- ASPxDocumentViewer - used to preview and print reports in ASP.NET applications (when the ReportsAspNetModuleV2.ReportViewerType property is set to ASP).
- ASPxWebDocumentViewer - used to preview and print reports in ASP.NET applications (when the ReportsAspNetModuleV2.ReportViewerType property is set to HTML5).
- ReportViewer - used to preview reports in Mobile applications.
Tip
Examples on how to access and customize these controls:
Reports V2 Module Components
The Reports V2 Module consists of the following platform-agnostic and platform-specific components.
- ReportsModuleV2 - Add it to your platform-agnostic module in the Module Designer.
- ReportsWindowsFormsModuleV2 - Add it to your WinForms application project in the Application Designer.
- ReportsAspNetModuleV2 - Add it to your ASP.NET application project in the Application Designer.
- ReportsMobileModuleV2 - Add it to your Mobile application project in the Application Designer.
Note
You can add modules to your application when you create a new XAF solution using the Solution Wizard. To do this, select modules in the Choose Extra Modules step.
- To add an extra module in code, add it to the XafApplication.Modules or ModuleBase.RequiredModuleTypes list (adding a reference to the module assembly is insufficient).
Report Data Type
Reports are persisted using business objects (entities) that implement the IReportDataV2 interface. If you use XPO, the ReportDataV2 persistent class implemented in the Business Class Library is used automatically. If you use Entity Framework, you should manually set the ReportsModuleV2.ReportDataType property to ReportDataV2 and add this type to your DBContext (see Create a Report in Visual Studio). You can also use a custom report data type (see How to: Add a Custom Column to the Reports List).