sql server reporting services: We are need of better quality/featured charts than Rept. Svcs. can currently
provide. (dual-Y axis, bigger chart selection, etc.)

I understand that a possible solution to this is to wrap a third-party
charting package with a Rept. Svc. custom assembly.

But before I start hacking out code, I was hoping to find out if anyone else
has done this or has thoughts on the best way to do it.

Would the approach be to pass the SQL query from the dataset to the custom
assembly, have the assembly execute the SQL, render the chart to a byte[]
array, and then pass the bytes back to report services to render the chart?

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

In RS 2000 you can take this approach:
* Add an image to your report
* Set the image type to Database
* Set the image mimetype to e.g. image/png
* For the image value use an expression like
=MyCustomAssembly.GenerateChart()

Notes:
* the custom assembly has to return the image as byte[].
* the custom assembly has to fetch the data on its own.
* for security permission considerations when fetching data within a custom
assembly you might want to check these previous postings:
Accessing SQL Server:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.sqlserver.reportingsvcs&mid=136333b1-2ac6-4cdf-a169-458172dca411&sloc=en-us
Accessing Oracle:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?dg=microsoft.public.sqlserver.reportingsvcs&mid=3cd1a1de-15d4-41fe-bc9b-3c9df93ac2ee&sloc=en-us

A future version of Reporting Services will provide additional ways to do
this type of integration (it will even allow you to directly access datasets
that are already processed, grouped, filtered, sorted by the RS processing
engine).

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