ActiveReports 6 Online Help Send comments on this topic.
Basic Data Bound Reports
See Also
ActiveReports 6 > ActiveReports User Guide > Samples and Walkthroughs > Walkthroughs > Basic Data Bound Reports

Glossary Item Box

In ActiveReports, the simplest reporting style is a tabular listing of fields from a data source.

This walkthrough illustrates the basics of setting up bound reports by introducing the ideas of using the DataSource icon and dragging fields from the Report Explorer onto the report.

The walkthrough is split up into the following activities:

To complete the walkthrough, you must have access to the Northwind database. A copy is located at C:\Program Files\GrapeCity\ActiveReports 6\Data\NWIND.MDB (on a 64-bit Windows operating system, a copy is located in C:\Program Files (x86)\GrapeCity\ActiveReports 6\Data\NWIND.MDB).

When you have finished this walkthrough, you will have a report that looks similar to the following.

To create a new Visual Studio project

  1. Open Visual Studio.
  2. From the File menu, select New > Project.
  3. In the New Project dialog, select the project type in the Project Types section and then select Windows Application in the Templates section.
  4. Change the name of your project and click OK.

To add an ActiveReport to the Visual Studio project

  1. From the Project menu, select Add New Item.
  2. Select ActiveReports 6 (code-based) File and rename the file rptBound.
  3. Click Add.

To connect the report to a database

  1. Click the gray report DataSource icon on the Detail section band to open the Report Data Source dialog.
  2. On the OLE DB tab, next to Connection String, click the Build button.
  3. In the Data Link Properties window that appears, select Microsoft Jet 4.0 OLE DB Provider and click the Next button.
  4. Click the ellipsis (...) button to browse to the Northwind database. Click Open once you have selected the appropriate access path.
  5. Click OK to close the window and fill in the Connection String field.
  6. In the Query field, enter the following SQL query
    SQL Query Copy Code
    SELECT * FROM Products
  7. Click OK to save the data source and return to the report design surface.

To add controls to the report

  1. In the Report Explorer, expand the Fields node, then the Bound node. Drag the following fields onto the detail section and set the properties of each textbox as indicated.
    Field Text Location Size
    ProductName Product Name 0, 0 2.3, 0.2
    QuantityPerUnit Quantity 2.4, 0 1.5, 0.2
    UnitsInStock Stock  4, 0 1, 0.2
  2. Click just below the fields to select the Detail section, and in the Properties Window, set the CanShrink property to True to eliminate white space in the rendered report.

To view the report

You can quickly view your report at design time by clicking the Preview tab at the bottom of the designer.

  1. Drag the ActiveReports viewer control from the Visual Studio toolbox onto the Windows Form and set its Dock property to Fill.
  2. Double click the title bar of the form to create a Form_Load event, and add the code needed to run the report and display it in the viewer.
    Run the report and display it in the viewer using Visual Basic.NET Copy Code
    Dim rpt As New rptBound
rpt.Run()
Me.Viewer1.Document = rpt.Document
    Run the report and display it in the viewer using C# Copy Code
    rptBound rpt = new rptBound();
rpt.Run();
this.viewer1.Document = rpt.Document;
  3. To enable the viewer's copy button, add references to the RtfExport and TextExport dlls.
  4. Run the project to display the report in the viewer.

See Also