Custom assembilies in the Dundas Controls

Hi,

Currently I am using SSRS 2005 and the Dundas Map and Chart controls.

I have been doing extensive customization with these controls thru custom assembilies / DLL's written in C#.

For the upcoming integration of the controls into SSRS 2008, will the same amount of extensibility be available?

Thanks!

Do I need to provide an example of this?

Would that help my post get a response?

Thanks!

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(bump)

Could someone let me know about this?

I wouldn't mind posting something to make a case for it.

Thanks,

-Don

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Can someone please respond to this?

Thanks,

-Don

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Don, could you provide an example of what properties you have customized, what kind of functionality is performed within your customizations?

-- Robert

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Hi Robert,

I use all the Dundas controls, but I have currently only customized two, Chart and Map.

With either of them I am creating a C# dll and linking to it via the "Custom Assemblies" tab.

For the Chart control, I create pareto lines, create shaded areas based on data and insert simple graphics for navigation/drill thru's to other reports.

The bulk of my customization has been done with the map control.

For one of my clients (a large real estate developer) I created ESRI compliant shapefiles that represent each home in a subdivision. These are loaded based on user selections, showing the status of sales or any metric the user chooses.

I recently have started reporting sales and marketing data using the map control and the US maps included with it. I'm also using shapes representing zipcode areas to show geographic locations of customers, etc etc.

With both the map and chart control, one of the most if not the most powerful feature IMO is the ability for me to get a reference to the actual graphics object and draw directly into it using C# and GDI+. Also, Dundas exposing the render cycle in many stages allows me a ton of flexibility in my control over the render process.

While I completely welcome your team integrating the Dundas controls into SSRS (the dialogs for the chart control in 2000 & 2005 were much better than the Dundas dialogs IMO), it would be really awesome if you could either improve on the extensibility via .dll's as I have previously mentioned or leave the existing functionality there with no changes.

I know I probably one of a few folks that are using the controls in this way but I feel confident that if the extensibility were to remain in the controls for SSRS 2008/Katmai that you would quickly have a die hard group of new users taking advantage of this.

Every client I have showed the custom map stuff to has been extremely surprised the ease that it can be customized (new shapes/shapefiles etc). It has been a dealmaker. The maps have been so effective it's lead to many clients of mine purchasing the Dundas suite simply for the map control (and these are clients that do not normally purchase 3rd party controls).

Please feel free to contact me directly if you feel any of this needs more explanation, I would be happy to go over it and provide any examples that you may need.

Thanks!

-Don

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We appreciate the feedback and take it into account.

At this point however it is a bit too early to make definitive statements if it is going to fit in SSRS 2008.

-- Robert

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Hi Robert,

Does this mean that the Dundas Map & Chart may not make it into SSRS 2008?

Thanks!

-Don