Walkthrough: Deploying Compiled Reports

With ActiveReports, compiled reports can be set up for deployment by including the ActiveReports deployment .msm file in your Visual Studio deployment project.

This walkthrough illustrates how to create a deployment project in ActiveReports for a compiled report.

This walkthrough is split up into the following activities:

Adding an installer project to an existing ActiveReports project
Adding the ActiveReports .msm file
Adding the ActiveReports application to the installer
Deploying the installer application

Adding an installer project to an existing ActiveReports project

To add the installer project

Open an existing ActiveReports project or create a new report.
On the Build menu, click "Build [your ActiveReports project name]" to build your report project.
On the File menu, select Add Project and click on New Project...
Under Project Types in the Add New Project dialog, select Setup and Deployment Projects.
In the Templates window, select Setup Project, rename the file and click OK.
Select the Installer project in Solution Explorer. In the Properties window, select the ProductName property and type in the name of your file.
Note The ProductName property determines the name that will be displayed for the application in folder names and in the Add/Remove Programs dialog box.

Adding the ActiveReports .msm file

To add the ActiveReports .msm file

Right-click on the Installer project in Solution Explorer.
Click on Add and then click Merge Module...
Open the Deployment folder where ActiveReports is installed (e.g. c:\\program files\Data Dynamics\ActiveReports for .NET 2.0\Deployment).
Click on "ActiveReportsDistrib.msm" to select it and click Open.
This adds all of the ActiveReports distributed assemblies to your project.

Note Since the Setup and Deployment project will automatically detect and add any existing assembly dependencies to your project and the .msm file adds all ActiveReports assemblies, you will need to exclude any duplicate ActiveReports DLLs from the "Detected Dependencies" folder in the Solution Explorer window.

Adding the ActiveReports application to the installer

To add the ActiveReports application

Select the Installer project in Solution Explorer.
In the File System Editor, choose the Application folder.
On the Action menu, select Add, Project Output...
In the Add Project Output Group dialog, choose your ActiveReports project name from the drop-down list.
Select "Primary Output" from the list and click OK.
On the Build menu, click "Build [your Installer project name]" to build your Installer project.

Deploying the installer application

To deploy the installer application

Select the Installer project in Solution Explorer.
On the Project menu, click Install.
The Installer application will run and install the project on your computer.

See Also

Samples | Walkthroughs