Posted 5 March 2024, 6:36 am EST
I have to tell you, section reports is getting harder and harder for ActiveReports to defend its position of them not being phased out.
I get that the visual design component we’re now waiting until SP1 or SP2 of version 18, but even the version 18 documentation gives examples with screenshots of things which simply aren’t there.
It’s referred to in the manual page 1,763 as, “… a legacy paginated-only format that is similar to the RDLX report type with the BandedList data region…” Legacy? I was on a developer meeting with AR last year where they promised that section reports are here to stay, etc.
The Code-based section report setup tells you to use version 18 templates, but they don’t exist, and the example in the manual shows version 17 (page 1,794).
I converted our version 16 to 18 - all code-based reports. I used the Visual Studio ActiveReports plugin; it was not helpful. The conversion tool adds in all the new Mescius namespace NuGet packages, but none of those are appropriate for the section reports. It was only through trial and error that I found I needed to remove all of them and add manually GrapeCity.ActiveReports (version 18!) NuGet packages.
I tried to use the help documentation but honestly, there ought to have been an entire section on just “How to upgrade section reports”.
Every time we see another AR update, we just cringe at this point. I wish so much it was otherwise.