Version 18 and Section Reports

Version 18 and Section Reports

Posted by: John.Reynolds on 5 March 2024, 6:36 am EST

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  John.Reynolds

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  Posted 5 March 2024, 6:36 am EST

  I have to tell you, section reports is getting harder and harder for ActiveReports to defend its position of them not being phased out.

  I get that the visual design component we’re now waiting until SP1 or SP2 of version 18, but even the version 18 documentation gives examples with screenshots of things which simply aren’t there.

  It’s referred to in the manual page 1,763 as, “… a legacy paginated-only format that is similar to the RDLX report type with the BandedList data region…” Legacy? I was on a developer meeting with AR last year where they promised that section reports are here to stay, etc.

  The Code-based section report setup tells you to use version 18 templates, but they don’t exist, and the example in the manual shows version 17 (page 1,794).

  I converted our version 16 to 18 - all code-based reports. I used the Visual Studio ActiveReports plugin; it was not helpful. The conversion tool adds in all the new Mescius namespace NuGet packages, but none of those are appropriate for the section reports. It was only through trial and error that I found I needed to remove all of them and add manually GrapeCity.ActiveReports (version 18!) NuGet packages.

  I tried to use the help documentation but honestly, there ought to have been an entire section on just “How to upgrade section reports”.

  Every time we see another AR update, we just cringe at this point. I wish so much it was otherwise.

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  anand.sinha

  

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  Posted 6 March 2024, 4:11 pm EST

  Hi John,

  Apologies for the misunderstanding, we had a word with our documentation team and it appears as if there has been a typographical mistake (the SectionReport references were to include that they were based upon the legacy GDI platform). Rest assured the SectionReports are not going anywhere.

  >> The conversion tool adds in all the new Mescius namespace NuGet packages, but none of those are appropriate for the section reports. It was only through trial and error that I found I needed to remove all of them and add manually GrapeCity.ActiveReports (version 18!) NuGet packages.
  
  Currently, only the Assembly name is ‘MESCIUS.ActiveReports’ the Namespaces still do start from ‘GrapeCity.ActiveReports’ only, so when installing a package from NuGet you’ll need to specify ‘MESCIUS’ but when using the package in your project you’ll need to specify ‘using GrapeCity.’

  Apologies for the inconvenience.

  Regards,
  
  Anand

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  peter.herschel

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  Posted 7 March 2024, 12:19 am EST

  I in the same boat as John. Our applications are full of code based section reports. I have only migrated a few to RDX. Any new reports will be RDX. I am also starting to see compile warnings about deprecated binary serializers for code based section report parameters.

  I totally agree with John that the needs to be much more explicit help content on managing your code based section reports with NET8+ . **A separate forum would be nice. **

  -Pete

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  anand.sinha

  

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  Posted 7 March 2024, 6:04 pm EST

  Hi Pete,

  Apologies for the inconvenience, the Binary Serializers are made obsolete by Microsoft is recommended by Microsoft to use the JSON Serializer or the XML Serializer, you may learn more about the same here:

  • Microsoft - BinaryFormatter serialization methods are obsolete and prohibited in ASP.NET apps.
  • StackOverflow - Is there a high performance way to replace the BinaryFormatter in .NET5?

  If you face any issues in implementing ActiveReports or any of its components in your project please feel free to create a ticket for the same and we’ll be happy to assist you!

  Cheers,
  
  Anand

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  John.Reynolds

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  Posted 8 March 2024, 5:46 am EST

  I was looking back at the ActiveReports forum posts from 2018 forward concerning Section Reports. Even back then the discussion was, how to migrate your section reports to Page / RDL.

  So, I read the posts and launched the “ActiveReports.Imports.Win.exe” (C:\Program Files (x86)\MESCIUS\ActiveReports 18\Tools\ActiveReports.Imports.Win.exe) hoping to see about converting. I selected “RPX”. But despite pointing it to my reports folder where are the section reports are, it doesn’t see anything to convert.

  Looking in my solution folders, the only thing there are .cs and .vb files for the reports. So I guess using the conversion wizard in this case is a non-starter, or am I missing something?

  –J

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  anand.sinha

  

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  Posted 10 March 2024, 10:09 pm EST

  Hi John,

  As you are working with Code-Based SectionReports (.cs/.vb) you’ll first need to save them as XML-Based SectionReports (.RPX), you can save your Code-Based SectionReport to XML-Based SectionReport (.RPX file) by using the SaveLayout() method on your SectionReport.

  Then you can use the Import Tool that comes with ActiveReports 16 located at C:\Program Files (x86)\GrapeCity\ActiveReports XX\Tools\GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Imports.Win.exe to convert your RPX report to RDLX reports.

  You can learn more about the import tool here: Import RPX.

  Regards,
  
  Anand