DoDN Source & Presentation

Thanks for coming to Western Michigan's Day of Dot Net this past Saturday! The session went well, had some good questions about the configuration of a SharePoint developer's rig that I'll address in some detail in a subsequent post, but wanted to get this posted first. It's the presentation deck and the source code for the demos. The source code is all built for Visual Studio 2010. If you have access to the Expression Blend tools, all the better, but for the demos Visual Studio will definitely do the trick.


Here's the link to the zip file: DoDN-SharePoint-Silverlight.zip


Note that for the third demo, you'll need to host the compiled .XAP file in a SharePoint site that has a list named DayofDotNet. There's a .STP file (a SharePoint List Template file) you'll need to use to create this list, so that it has the fields & content the code is looking for. Post a comment or email me if you get stuck.


Thanks again for attending!


Steve & Charles

Visual Studio 2010 & Crystal Reports - change server at runtime

What? This isn't a SharePoint topic! You're right...every so often have to stretch a little bit.

So I have an ASP.Net web app and needed to add in a report. I didn't want to hand code it, and I had looked at using Crystal Reports for a different project & liked how nicely it integrates with Visual Studio. EZ-PZ to deploy it to the server, just install the runtime, deploy the project and we have reports!

Then came time to get the project up to production. I installed the runtime for Crystal Reports, clicked the Report link,and got the dreaded Database Login failed. Hmmm - I had updated the web.config appsettings to point to the Production SQL Server instead of my dev box.

That wasn't enough. Found a few entries suggesting to use the CrystalDecisions ConnectionInfo class, then another page saying to apply this change to all of the tables & subtables on the report, but that didn't help me - still got that logon error.

I ended up going the route of populating a data table with my report data, then using this table in the report - made things easier.

One other twist, I then needed to export this as a PDF, but I have SSL enabled; had to add in a few more lines of code. Take a look! And yes, this is VB.Net - it's an inherited project, too many lines to convert over!

Dim dt As DataTable

dt = BindReport()

rpt.SetDataSource(dt)

Dim reportDate As DateTime = Session("CurrentPayPeriod")

' Tell the browser this is a PDF document so it will use an appropriate viewer.
Response.Buffer = True
Response.ClearContent()
Response.ClearHeaders()
Response.ContentType = "application/pdf"


rpt.ExportToHttpResponse(ExportFormatType.PortableDocFormat, Response, False, "Timesheet Report")

Dim conString As String = System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings("connectString")
Dim con As SqlConnection = New SqlConnection(conString)
con.Open()
Dim cmd As New SqlCommand("usp_GetReportData", con)
cmd.CommandType = CommandType.StoredProcedure
cmd.Parameters.Add("@SelectedDate", SqlDbType.Date).Value = CDate(Session("ReportPeriod"))
cmd.Prepare()

Dim sqlAdapter As SqlDataAdapter = New SqlDataAdapter(cmd)

Dim dtReport As DataTable = New DataTable()
sqlAdapter.Fill(dtReport)
con.Close()

Return dtReport
End Function