Adding External Data Provider to .NET 6 Standalone Designer

Environment

Product Version	16.2.22.914+
Product	Progress® Telerik® Reporting
Report Designer	.NET Standalone Designer

Description

Visit the updated Integrating the Microsoft SQL Client Data Provider article for a how-to on connecting to MS SQL Databases.

With R3 2022, we started shipping a Stanadalone Report Designer compiled for .NET 6.0 runtime which allows resolving assemblies that target .NET Core/5/6. The designer now has the ability to automatically discover assemblies which means that there is no need to register them in the configuration file.

The designer can be found in the installation folder of Telerik Reporting -> \Report Designer\.NET.

In this article, you will learn how to add external data providers used for the SQL DataSource.

Solution

We will add the SqlClient Data Prover for this example. The approach can be used for any data provider.

1. Create a new console application targeting .NET 6.
2. Add the Microsoft.Data.SqlClient NuGet package.
3. Build the project and go to the Bin folder.
4. Copy the DLLs related to the Microsoft.Data.SqlClient: Azure.Core.dll, Azure.Identity.dll, Microsoft.Data.SqlClient.dll and so on.
5. Paste them into the Standalone Designer for .NET 6 folder. By default, this would be the installation folder of Telerik Reporting -> \Report Designer\.NET.
6. The Bin folder of the console application should contain an additional folder named runtimes with several subfolders such as win, unix, win-x64, etc. Copy the DLLs from the folders that correspond to your Operating System and CPU architecture.
7. Paste the additional assemblies in the folder of the Standalone Designer for .NET and replace the existing ones if there are any duplicates.
8. Restart the designer if you have previously opened it.
9. Add a new SQL DataSource. You will see that the Data Provider is in the dropdown.