HOWTO: How Do I Use the End-User Report Designer Control on a WinForms Project Through No-Touch Deployment?

HOWTO: How Do I Use the End-User Report Designer Control on a WinForms Project Through No-Touch Deployment?

Due to the complex nature of security permissions that Microsoft has instituted, using ActiveReports for .NET in a No-Touch environment is rather difficult, but not impossible. Included is the code for the attached sample on how to do this. The steps needed to make sure it will run correctly are listed below.

1. First, extract the files out to your hard drive (preferably the C: Drive). You should end up with two directories – EndUserDesigner and Setup1.
2. Next, go under EndUserDesigner\bin\Release and web share this directory to start the no touch deployment process.
3. Then, open up the EndUserDesigner solution file and take note of a few items:
   1. [assembly: AssemblyKeyFile("..\\..\\eud.snk")] – This assembly must be signed with a strongname to allow for security on the client machines. By default, the .NET framework doesn’t do this. You can create your own strongname using “sn –k (key file)”
   2. App.config – this is added to license the End User Designer and ActiveReports assemblies. In this file should be your xml license key. You can create this key using the “Create Web.Config Key” option from the start menu.
   3. All ActiveReports assemblies have CopyLocal set to true. This is done so the assemblies are copied locally so the webserver can serve them down to the client using No-Touch Deployment.
4. Compile the EndUserDesigner solution, then, using the Visual Studio command prompt, navigate to the directory where the output was placed (usually EndUserDesigner\bin\Release). Once in here, run the following command –“secutil -c -s EndUserDesignercs.exe”. This will give you a public key you will need to use in the next step.
5. Open up the Setup1 solution file and open the Installer1.cs file. Find EUDpublicKey and set it to the value you received in the last step. Also set the WebSite string to the name of your server, or website that this will be accessed from. Common examples would be “suzyq” or www.datadynamics.com.
6. Compile this solution and copy the .msi file over to your shared web folder (usually EndUserDesigner\bin\Release).

This completes the steps to set up the server with the project. To run this from a client you must first access the webshare through your browser and run the setup .msi to set up permissions on the client machine’s .NET framework. Once this is complete, click on “EndUserDesignercs.exe” to run the sample on the client.

The following article was referenced: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnforms/html/winforms11122002.asp