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Extending Report Designer to Recognize Custom Assemblies

It is a common requirement to add your own User Functions or bind to custom CLR objects, data models (such as an Telerik Data Access model), external assemblies with custom data source objects, data feeds (including OData), and web services.

In order to expose your data, so it can be utilized by the Object/OpenAccess/Entity data source components, or extend the default behavior of the Telerik Reporting engine with custom User Functions, you have to use the assemblyReferences Element of the Telerik.Reporting configuration section to reference your custom assembly:

<configuration>
    <configSections>
        <section
            name="Telerik.Reporting"
            type="Telerik.Reporting.Configuration.ReportingConfigurationSection, Telerik.Reporting"
            allowLocation="true"
            allowDefinition="Everywhere"/>
    </configSections>
    ...
    <Telerik.Reporting>
        <AssemblyReferences>
            <add name="MyCustomAssembly" version="1.0.0.0" culture="neutral" publicKeyToken ="null" />
        </AssemblyReferences>
    </Telerik.Reporting>
</configuration>

The section should be added to the designer configuration file, Telerik.ReportDesigner.exe.config that can be found in the Report Designer folder, which is the root location where the application is being executed. By default this is '(Telerik Reporting installation folder)\Report Designer'. The Report Designer would also search the assembly itself in this base folder.

To instruct the Report Designer to look for assemblies in other locations as well, use the <probing> Element. For more information, see Locating the Assembly through Codebases or Probing:

<configuration>
...
    <runtime>
        <assemblyBinding xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1">
            <probing privatePath="MyDir;MyDir2\SubDir"/>
        </assemblyBinding>
    </runtime>
    <Telerik.Reporting>
        <AssemblyReferences>
            <add name="MyCustomAssembly" version="1.0.0.0" culture="neutral" publicKeyToken ="null" />
        </AssemblyReferences>
    </Telerik.Reporting>
...
</configuration>

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