Report Builder 2.0 - Report Designer

Report Data, the Report Designer, and the properties

These are the items that you will find just below the "ribbon" assuming you have not disabled Report Data and Properties (these are enabled by default) as shown in the following screenshot. The properties will be that of the object highlighted in the report body.

Report Data

As seen in the previous figure, you can create New report data; Edit an existing report data (the figure above has an existing report data in the C_Main. It also has three main folders. The built-in fields we saw earlier. The parameters will contain parameters associated with the report. The images folder contains images that can be imported into this folder, which you can embed in a report from your hard drive.

The Report Data is an excellent starting point to create a report from scratch without using wizards displayed in default. When you click on the drop-down handle New the following menu will be displayed.

All you need to do is to go and configure each of the items from top to bottom as follows:

• The Data Source...;will bring up a window where you establish theconnection to the datasource.
• After this, you click on Dataset...;to create a query to extract a set from the database which you want to display in your report. When you click on Dataset...;you will display the properties of Dataset which you can use to design a query visually (only for SQL Server databases), an SQL Statement or import a saved SQL query or RDL file.
• You can then define parameter(s) by clicking on Parameters...; to create a parameter from its Properties window. You add a parameter if you want to filter your query further to produce a smaller and morer manageable set of pertinent information.
• Click on Images...; to choose images from your machine if you need to embed them in the report.

On the other hand, if you already have these you can edit them or delete them.