[quoted text, click to view]

Sounds familiar :-) We are creating an ad hoc designer right now in hope
that the RS team will provide an reusable WYSWYG designer in RS 2007(?).
Based on my experience, if you need to do a lot of RDL manipulation, what I
would recommend is you build an object model on top of it. Creating objects
for all RDL elements is tedious and will take some time but it really pays
off in a long run because you don't have to use the XML DOM API. It worked
great for us.

--
HTH,
----------------------------------------------
Teo Lachev, MVP, MCSD, MCT
"Microsoft Reporting Services in Action"
"Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005"
Home page and blog: http://www.prologika.com/

-------------------------------------------------
[quoted text, click to view]

Our approach is to implement one class for each RDL object which "knows" how
to serialize and deserialize itself. Then, when you serialize the master
report object, the whole hierarchy is serialized. I believe this is pretty
much what the internal RDL object in the Report Designer does as well. This
is what the implementation for the Field object may look like:
using System;

using System.Xml;

using System.Xml.Serialization;

namespace Reporting.ObjectModel

{

/// <summary>

/// Contains information about a field within the data model of the report.

/// </summary>

public class Field : IXmlSerializable

{

#region Constants

internal enum StandardFieldNames

{

Item,

Entity

}

#endregion

#region Private Variables

private string _name;

private string _dataField;

private Value _value;

private Type _typeName;

#endregion

/// <summary>

/// Creates an instance of a Field.

/// </summary>

public Field(){}

/// <summary>

/// Creates an instance of a Field and sets its state.

/// </summary>

public Field(string name, string dataField, Type type)

{

_name = name;

_dataField = dataField;

_typeName = type;

}

#region Public Properties

/// <summary>

/// Name to use for the field within the report.

/// </summary>

public string Name

{

get {return _name;}

set {_name = value;}

}

/// <summary>

/// Name of the field in the query.

/// </summary>

public string DataField

{

get {return _dataField;}

set {_dataField = value;}

}

/// <summary>

/// An expression that evaluates to the value of this field.

/// </summary>

public Value Value

{

get

{

if (_value == null)

_value = new Value();

return _value;

}

set {_value = value;}

}

/// <summary>

/// An expression that evaluates to the value of this field.

/// </summary>

public Type TypeName

{

get

{

return _typeName;

}

set { this._typeName = value; }

}

#endregion

#region IXmlSerializable Members

/// <summary>

/// Converts a Field into its RDL representation .

/// </summary>

/// <param name="writer">The <typeparamref name="XmlWriter"/> stream to
which the Field is serialized.</param>

public void WriteXml(XmlWriter writer)

{

//--- Field

writer.WriteStartElement(Rdl.FIELD);

writer.WriteAttributeString(Rdl.NAME, _name);

//--- DataField

if (_dataField != null)

writer.WriteElementString(Rdl.DATAFIELD, _dataField);

//--- TypeName


if (_typeName != null)

writer.WriteElementString("rd:TypeName", _typeName.ToString());

//--- Value

if (_value != null)

((IXmlSerializable)_value).WriteXml(writer);

writer.WriteEndElement();

}

/// <summary>

///

/// </summary>

/// <returns></returns>

public System.Xml.Schema.XmlSchema GetSchema()

{

return null;

}

/// <summary>

/// Generates an Field from its RDL representation.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="reader">The <typeparamref name="XmlReader"/> stream from
which the Field is deserialized</param>

public void ReadXml(XmlReader reader)

{

if (reader.AttributeCount > 0)

_name = reader[Rdl.NAME];

while (reader.Read())

{

if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.EndElement && reader.Name == Rdl.FIELD)

{

break;

}

else if (reader.NodeType == XmlNodeType.Element)

{

//--- DataField

if (reader.Name == Rdl.DATAFIELD)

_dataField = reader.ReadString();

//--- Value

if (reader.Name == Rdl.VALUE)

{

if (_value == null)

_value = new Value();

((IXmlSerializable)_value).ReadXml(reader);

}

}

}

}

#endregion

}

}


--
HTH,
----------------------------------------------
Teo Lachev, MVP, MCSD, MCT
"Microsoft Reporting Services in Action"
"Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005"
Home page and blog: http://www.prologika.com/

-------------------------------------------------
[quoted text, click to view]