Editing RDL files with Visual Studio 2008

visual-studio-2008 reporting-services rdl
Xavier Poinas picture Xavier Poinas · Aug 24, 2009 · Viewed 24.4k times · Source

I have installed SQL Server 2008 Express on two workstations. On one workstation, it has updated the VS2008 installation so that I can create reporting projects containing reports as *.rdl files. On the other workstations, VS2008 can only create/edit *.rdlc files. The report edition interface is also different.

I do not understand where the difference comes from. Two major differences between the two workstations are: - one is x86 and had no VS installation before installing SQL Server 2008 Express - the other one is x64 and had VS2005 and VS2008 previously installed

I feel like on the second workstation the SQL Server installer updated VS2005 instead of VS2008.

My understanding is that rdlc files are more recent and somehow probably better, but I'd like to edit rdl file for compatibility purpose and also because I'm used to this user interface.

Any advice?

Many thanks.

Answer

Michael Maddox picture Michael Maddox · Aug 24, 2009

Business Intelligence Design Studio is what allows you to create RDL files. It installs from the SQL Server installer, but actually modifies the install of Visual Studio such that you can create SSRS specific projects.

Here's another Stack Overflow question on RDLC vs. RDL:

When to use RDLC over RDL reports?

Which points to this thread with more information:

http://forums.asp.net/t/1173578.aspx

See also:

http://www.gotreportviewer.com/

Question 10 on GotReportViewer is "What is the difference between RDL and RDLC formats?"

Related questions

SSRS the definition of the report is invalid

How can I resolve the below error message that I receive when I try to deploy my report to our our Reporting Server using BIDS? Message: Error : The definition of the report '/OrderAnalysis' is invalid. Report Element: <Report …

Read More
Select All as default value for Multivalue parameter

I'm building a report in Visual Studio 2008 with a lot of multivalue parameters and it's working great, but I would like to have have the "(Select all)" option as the default value when the report is opened. Is there some …

Read More
Visual Studio for SSRS 2008 - How to organize reports into subfolders in Solution Explorer?

Right now I have a project called reports with several reports. In solution explorer it looks like this: Shared Data Sources -- DEV Reports -- Report1 -- Report2 -- Report3 I want to make it look like this and have …

Read More