DevExpress Data Blog

December 2010 - Posts

• End-User Report Designer Webinar Recap

  I wanted to do a little recap on what was covered in our End-User Designer Webinar which is found here: In this webinar, I prepared a sample app for managing contacts using XPO as the data layer: We started with this basic contact manager application and then worked through the following: Added a Create Report Feature: Load the end-user report designer and populate the field list according to the two types of reports (Person Report and Category Report). From the End-User Designer, users could then save their report definitions out to a file. Added Preview Report Feature: Load saved reports into a menu and preview each report. Added Edit Report Feature: Load saved reports into the End-User Report Designer in order to modify previously created reports Embed Report Preview and Edit into App: The last portion dealt primarily with embedding the preview and EUD controls into tabs within the program. Here we see the preview tab in all of its glory: In an effort to assist as much as possible, I have taken the liberty of uploading the code to our Code Central repository. I also wanted to say something about the sample application I built. I do not profess to be the zen-master of WinForms coding. The particular architecture I chose was my personal predilection for these things. I certainly welcome your comments and suggestions as that would be a tremendous learning experience for me. You should keep in mind however, that this is one of many ways to write this kind of app. Incidentally, there is a mistake in the demo! See if you can spot it (its very simple). As always, if there are any comments and/or questions, feel free to get a hold of me! Seth Juarez Email: sethj@devexpress.com Twitter: @SethJuarez Posted Dec 23 2010, 01:29 PM by Seth Juarez (DevExpress) with 3 comment(s) Filed under: reports, printing, end-user designer, contact database, winforms, application

• Register for an Upcoming Webinar–Using the End-User Report Designer–Thursday, December 16th, 2010

  In our previous webinar we had an “Ask the Reporting Team” session where we voted on the topics that should be covered in the future. The fist webinar will deal primarily with the End-User Report Designer. I thought I would take a moment mind-mapping out what I think should be covered in order to get some feedback. One of the most compelling offerings we have is the End-User Report Designer! This designer can be displayed by calling the ShowDesignerDialog() method on any report with the following outcome:   Most forget, however, that each element in the end-user report designer can itself be dragged on to a form in order to create your own specialized report designer. You have no doubt seen these tools in your toolbox: Our first webinar will go over these kinds of things with additional surprises added in 10.2. Here is the information: As always, if there are any comments and/or questions, feel free to get a hold of me! Seth Juarez Email: sethj@devexpress.com Twitter: @SethJuarez Posted Dec 02 2010, 02:03 PM by Seth Juarez (DevExpress) with 2 comment(s) Filed under: reports, end-user designer, end-user, designer, webinars, learning

• New Azure Interface

  Although this is not necessarily a DevExpress post, I think it is very relevant as we are definitely interested in ensuring that our controls work well in the Azure environment. Today I decided to log into my Windows Azure and SQL Azure accounts in order to see the health of the the reporting system I had created. I was surprised to find the following: This previous screenshot shows how my SQL Azure account is now managed. It looks to be completely built in Silverlight! I think the layout is pretty indicative of the type of layout one should seriously consider when building business applications in Silverlight. If you look at our expanded Silverlight offerings, you will notice that this kind of layout can easily be created! Take a look at how the Windows Azure instances are now managed: This new layout is extremely interesting for the following reason: perhaps Silverlight is not just for streaming videos. If Microsoft feels that the future of their business (which in  my opinion is in its Azure Services) should be run on the Silverlight platform, then maybe its time we consider the same. As always, if there are any comments and/or questions, feel free to get a hold of me! Seth Juarez Email: sethj@devexpress.com Twitter: @SethJuarez Posted Dec 01 2010, 10:26 AM by Seth Juarez (DevExpress) with no comments Filed under: azure