Question

I’ve created a “winform” application that communicates with a WCF service.

The winform displays a datagridview with many rows. The user is able to select (checkbox) the rows he wishes to print, then clicks the print button.

The selected rows are sent to a method in my WCF service which in turn, returns a collection of binary data (the documents to be printed). Once returned, I create a pdf file on disk for each binary data in the returned collection.

Once done, those newly created documents are sent to the printer…

NOTE:
Before creating these pdf documents, I need to create a “Summary” report document which will be printed before any of those pdf documents.

To do so, I call a method in my WCF Service that will return binary data. I then get that binary and create a summary pdf document with it…

Here is my question:
What is the best approach in order to create my “Summary Report”?

So far, I’ve been trying to design my summary report using Reporting Services, but I’m grasping at straws with some of the things I wish to do in that report (ie: trying to add a checkbox column and make it “selected” or not depending on a certain rule and/or make my report bilingual…). So I’m thinking that maybe RS is not as flexible/intuitive as I thought it would…

My WCF Service would invoke the Reporting Services web service, call the appropriate report and return the binary data which I’ll send back to the winform application.

I also though of using Crystal Report but since I’ve never used it, it would be counter productive…

The last alternative that I can think of is calling a web page from within my WCF service passing along the necessary parameters. The web page would render itself and I’d try to convert that web page into binary data which will be returned by my WCF service method…

Although I haven’t tried the last alternative, I think it might give me more flexibility as to what I can/can’t do.

Does anyone have a suggestion or another alternative that can help me out?
Thanks

Answer 1

I didn’t realize this post was still open…

If anyone cares to know, this is the solution I finally came up with:

After I obtain a collection of binary data and loop through that collection to generate physical PDF files on the user’s disk, I needed a way to call (a second time) my WCF to generate a Summary report. Once rendered, the idea was to obtain the generated result (binary) and send that data back to the winform application so I can create a nice little Summary.pdf file (on the user’s disk).

Once done, programmatically send all the generated PDF files to the printer using a 3rd party component.

Now…because the Summary report could take a while to render itself, I was increasing my chances of getting a timeout. Increasing the timeout was not an appropriate alternative…

So the solution was, instead of calling/creating the Summary report on the server, I decided to incorporate inside my winform application a Client Report Definition file (.rdlc).

Basically, when my winform application is installed, it also incorporates a Summary.rdlc file. When the appropriate time comes, I get the data needed for the report from my WCF service and feed this data to the .rdlc file which renders locally on the user’s computer which in turn, creates a Summary.pdf file on the user’s disk.

So that’s it!