ActiveReports 12
Report Types
ActiveReports 12 > ActiveReports User Guide > Concepts > Report Types

ActiveReports provides a number of ways to design a report. You can choose a report type based on your layout requirements. Depending on the type of report you select, you also get various file formats to create your reports.

In this section

Report Definition Language (RDL) Report

Page Report

Code-Based Section Report

XML-Based Section Report

Report Layout Types

You can design reports using different layouts depending on your requirements. This section introduces these layout types and describes the differences between them to allow you to select the one that suits your report.

Page Layout

In a Page Layout, you design reports at the page level without any banded sections. This lets you place controls anywhere on the report.

In a Page report, controls do not change in size based on the data, but you can use an OverflowPlaceHolder to handle any extra data.

RDL Layout

In a RDL report, controls grow vertically to accommodate data.Controls can grow and shrink, you can set up interactive sorting, you can set up drill-down reports in which detail data is initially hidden, and can be toggled by other items, and you can add drill-through links to other reports and to bookmark links within reports.

Section Layout

In a Section Layout, you design reports in banded sections. A PageHeader, Detail and PageFooter section appear by default, and you can remove any but the detail section. Right-click the report and select Insert to add other section pairs like ReportHeader and ReportFooter, or GroupHeader and GroupFooter.

A report section contains a group of controls that are processed and printed at the same time as a single unit. All sections except the detail section come in pairs, above and below the detail section. When you use group headers and footers, the detail section processes for each group, and then the next group processes a group header, related details, and group footer. See Grouping Data for more information.

You can hide any section that you do not want shown by setting the Visible property of the section to False.

Report File Format Types

You can create reports in a number of file formats with a varied set of features. This section describes the use of each of these file formats.

Report Template Formats

To create a report, a user must select one of the following templates containing the report layout. See Adding an ActiveReport to a Project for details on how to access report templates.

Additional File Formats

ActiveReports also provides some additional file formats for reports. Each of these formats is used for a specific purpose as described below.


See the following list of file formats available in each layout.

Format Page Layout/RDL Layout Section Layout
RDLX
VB or CS
RPX
RDLX-Master
RDLX-Theme
RDSX
RDF

Features comparison between report types

In ActiveReports, the features available in a report depend on the type of report you select. See the following comparison list of features with each report type:

Feature Section report Page report RDL report
Viewers & Editors
Visual Studio Integrated Designer
Expressions Editor
Designer Script Editor
Windows Form Viewer
WebViewer (Pro Edition). Includes viewer types HTML, RawHTML, PDF, and Flash.
HTTP Handlers (Pro Edition)
Silverlight Viewer (Pro Edition)
Report Controls
BandedList
List
Tablix
Table
OverflowPlaceHolder
Chart
Barcode
Bullet
Calendar
CheckBox
Container
CrossSectionLine
CrossSectionBox
FormattedText
Image
Label
Line
PageBreak
Picture
ReportInfo
RichTextBox
Shape
Sparkline
SubReport
TextBox
TableOfContents
Interactivity
Hyperlinks
Parameters
Drill through
Drill down
Filtering
Grouping
Sorting
Data Connections
Standard Data Sources supported (e.g. SQL, OleDB, XML)
Unbound Data Source
Shared Data Source
Export
Export Filters
Rendering Extensions
PDF advanced export features: digital signatures, time stamp, bold font emulation (Pro Edition)
Miscellaneous
Master Reports
Themes
Collation
Styles (through Report Settings dialog)
Printing
Stand-alone Applications
ActiveReports Viewer
ActiveReports Theme Editor
ActiveReports Designer (stand-alone application)
See Also