Report Designer Tools Overview

Use Report Designers to create Telerik Reporting report definitions. We provide three different report designers. All report authoring environments include features such as WYSIWYG report design surface, enhanced support for expressions, and wizards for creating graphs, maps, crosstabs, tables, band, and label reports. Define interactive features such as parameters, bookmarks, drill-through, and drilldown actions.

This document gives a brief overview of the available Report Designers.

Standalone Report Designer

Standalone Report Designer is a standalone desktop application that features an easy-to-use environment. It is available for the .NET Framework and .NET 8:

• The executable file starting the application is Telerik.ReportDesigner.exe for the .NET Framework and Telerik.ReportDesigner.Net.exe for .NET 8. By default, it will be deployed upon product installation in the '(Telerik Reporting installation folder)\Report Designer' folder. For example, 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Progress\Telerik Reporting 2024 Q4\Report Designer'. The .NET 8 version is in the '.NET' subfolder.
• Does not require Visual Studio;

• Works with XML report definitions packaged in a zip archive .TRDP or in the plain legacy format .TRDX:

  • No need to recompile your projects when modifying the report definition;
  • No need to upgrade - you can directly open older report definition with a newer version of the Standalone Report Designer, report viewer or report service; The report definition will be automatically upgraded when edited and saved with the Standalone Report Designer;
  • This format can be stored and managed with the Report Server and other kinds of storage such as a database;

  • The recommended XML report definition format is TRDP due to the following reasons:

    • The report resources are stored in the zip so the report definition is faster to handle and more compact.
    • Supports report Localization.

Visual Studio Report Designer

Visual Studio Report Designer is a report authoring tool that runs in Visual Studio:

• Works with .NET type report definitions (.CS or .VB files):

  • More difficult to maintain - the project should be built every time a report definition is modified and you should go through the Upgrade Wizard when upgrading your Telerik Reporting installation;
  • Support for report events, still Telerik Reporting provides other declarative means to handle most of the complex tasks. For more information see Report Events;

• The Visual Studio Report Designer opens automatically upon double-click of a.CS/.VB report definition inheriting from Telerik.Reporting.Report. You need the corresponding version of Telerik Reporting installed on the machine.

• Due to Visual Studio assembly caching mechanism, the designer preview is not guaranteed, when using ObjectDataSource Component, EntityDataSource Component or OpenAccessDataSource Component.

Web Report Designer

The Web Report Designer is a widget that allows developers to bring the report editing functionality directly to their web applications. Some of its advantages are:

• Users can edit reports directly in your web application - there is no need to use additional software to edit a report
• The Web Report Designer works with TRDP and TRDX report definitions
• There is a built-in report previewer