Add Styles to Your Reporting Services Reports

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Add Styles to Your Reporting Services Reports

Adam Aspin

SSCarpal Tunnel

Points: 4890
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February 25, 2009 at 11:46 pm

#206340

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Add Styles to Your Reporting Services Reports

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Boyan Penev SSC-Addicted Points: 490 More actions · Answer 1

There is another way to apply "styles" to a report - by storing the report attributes, such as colour, in a database table and then retrieving them in a data set - either together with the data or just as a separate data set. Then you can either use them directly as Fields collection items or by creating parameters, which can be used in any report element regardless of the data set assigned to it. This overcomes some of the limitations that are listed in the article.

Boyan Penev

ggkids Valued Member Points: 61 More actions · Answer 2

I've never tried this but woulndt it be possible to have Custom Code refering to a external stylesheet that coult be used by multiple reports?

Adam Aspin SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4890 More actions · Answer 3

Indeed - and this is the subject of the next article in this series, which should be out next week!

Maurizio Urbano SSC Enthusiast Points: 132 More actions · Answer 4

I have added all the custom code functions onto an external class and simply reference the class on all my reports and use whatever function I need, if changes are required I simply change and recomplie the function...

Quite useful for standard stuff such as Date format, company colours and so on....

Adam Aspin SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4890 More actions · Answer 5

Absolutely - this makes centralising styles really easy - and is handled in the third article in the series (where you will see how to add these classes to templates too)!

Samuel Vella SSCrazy Eights Points: 8055 More actions · Answer 6

Boyan Penev (2/26/2009)
There is another way to apply "styles" to a report - by storing the report attributes, such as colour, in a database table and then retrieving them in a data set - either together with the data or just as a separate data set. Then you can either use them directly as Fields collection items or by creating parameters, which can be used in any report element regardless of the data set assigned to it. This overcomes some of the limitations that are listed in the article.

I was just about to post with the very same thing!

Storing as much of the style properties in a database as possible... then styles can be updated without having to republish any reports

Adam Aspin SSCarpal Tunnel Points: 4890 More actions · Answer 7

Thanks to both of you for this one - this is a very good idea that I have not covered it in this way in the following articles so would one of you like to post this as an addition to this "mini-series" to extend the tips and techniques offered?

David McKinney SSChampion Points: 10472 More actions · Answer 8

Nice article - nothing revolutionary, just good relevant practical advice on making life easier. Look forward to the next installments.

David McKinney.

Samuel Vella SSCrazy Eights Points: 8055 More actions · Answer 9

Adam Aspin (2/26/2009)
Thanks to both of you for this one - this is a very good idea that I have not covered it in this way in the following articles so would one of you like to post this as an addition to this "mini-series" to extend the tips and techniques offered?

I've not put it into action yet.

Coincidently It was yesterday when I was looking at methods of maintaining consistant colouring when using graphs. I ended up creating some tables and associating colours with categories so when several graphs/charts are on the same report the same category e.g. "bikes" will always be shown using the same colour e.g. "red". Then one legend can be used for several charts.

The concept should be farly easy to extend to other report properties.

Image locations for branding

fonts, font colors, weights etc... for consistant titleing

colour schemes

The final adaptation ties in with using dynamic colours for graphs i.e. using hex values rather than the names for the colours.

Doing it this way gives an option for starting with a base colour - defined as a hex value, then adding or subtracting to the RGB components to give a spread of colours from the base colour

PS. If you're benched at the moment then you've probably got a lot more time than me to work on an article 😉

Gurpreet Atwal SSC-Addicted Points: 498 More actions · Answer 10

This is a good approach but I think that taking the styles into a stored proc or data base for that matter and then using them in the report is a better option. That way the maintenance become much more easier because you just have to alter the SP rather than opening each report in BIDS and changing it. 🙂

sing4you SSCrazy Points: 2954 More actions · Answer 11

Hey, this is great stuff! I eagerly await the articles on using an external stylesheet and also using styles values stored in the DB.

Thank you so much for these ideas!

e.j.egan Old Hand Points: 369 More actions · Answer 12

Thanks for the info. I applied it to an RDL template I created and saved. One other drawback however is that you can't visibly see the colors from the layout view...which when you have a lot going on in a layout can be confusing (you always have to preview to ensure you have everything. I'll continue working with this for my borders colors and styles which, in my world, are more cumbersome.

graeme.hill Newbie Points: 7 More actions · Answer 13

I find that it works better to put my key/value pairs into a resx file and then reference the resource key to get the desired colour. This way it's easier to manage your styles and they can be properly localized. Defining your colours in code seems kind of awkward.

Boyan Penev SSC-Addicted Points: 490 More actions · Answer 14

Sure, I wouldn't mind doing it. It would allow report authors to choose the method that suits them better. I will send you a draft when I am ready.

Boyan Penev