I am trying different reporting solutions to distribute with my VB application, I have tried to use SharpReport and managed to finally figure out how to get a preview control on my form, but then I became stuck when trying to assign a report to the preview control, as a matter of fact I have been unable to get any SharpReport report I create to open in my application. Prior to switching to SharpDevelop from VS 2003 I had used a Crystal Reports Viewer and it funtioned perfectly with reports I created with Crystal Reports builder in VS 2003 Loading a report to the viewer with a combobox select. So I decided to try MS new reporting using RDCL files, and using their viewer, the component is a free download from Microsoft, I installed it and had access to the libraries, then I added the ReportViewer control from the appropriate Microsoft.Reporting.ReportViewer namespace and the control appeared in the tool box, however, when I added the control to my form I get nothing on the form, the report viewer shows as being added both on the bottom of the viewer and in the InitializeComponents() for designer code, and the code shows that there is supposedly height and width to it. If I run the form and assign a report to it I get no errors, but the form is just a grey form with nothing on it. Now I tried playing around and if I create new class and inherit the reportviewer I do get the report viewer to show up in the designer as a derived class of the reportviewer, but if I then add this new control to a form I still don't get anyhting on the winform.
Anyone have any idea what's going on? Alternatively does anyone have a simple way of doing reports with SharpReports with the preview control, the sample just confused me I didn't quite inderstand what what going on. Or even more Alternately, does anyone have know of another reportviewer control that can display srd, rpt, or rdcl files, that is gratis, or OpenSource?
My source code for the project can be downloaded from my website http://www.scheidel21.net/proj.htm if you need/want to look at it. I am going to include the report viewer dll files with the project.