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