Another great advantage to RDLs is the ability to perform an Explorer search on the file for a key word or any text for that matter. This simply cannot be done within a binary Crystal Report RPT format.  Recently at my work, due to a database upgrade resulting in a change in the underlying schema of the database that we report off of, I had to make changes to a myriad of reports. We have a table called DataPts (which is just that, a set of data points). Due to a format change in this table it was determined to change the name of the table to DataPtsEx (there was a good reason for this name). This is where the beauty of the RDL format comes into play.  All I had to do was to go into Microsoft Explorer and go to the top of the Reporting folder structure. Then I simply performed a search on all files that contain the text string "DataPts". Once I had the list I opened up each RDL and performed a Search and Replace on the string DataPts and changed it to DataPtsEx.  Since I use TextPad as my text editor of choice I could've easily created a Macro that would make this change as well.

This past week I made a concerted effort to utilize the flexibility of the RDL format by copying and pasting report parameters and datasets from one report to another by only using TextPad. If you have any experience with XML format, then identifying the various sections of the reports is very simple.  I am really starting to enjoy the ease of modifying a report simply using a text editor. One other thing that is really cool about modifying via a text editor is that if you also have Visual Studio open at the same time and you save the file in the text editor, it will prompt you to reload the file in Visual Studio. If you make a change in Visual Studio and you have a text editor open it will also tell you that the document has changed and will prompt you to save it. This occurs in TextPad but I have yet to test this in Notepad.

Next time I will delve into the various sections of an RDL file. If you have the chance, explore the RDL format in a text editor of your choice.  Start playing with copying various sections of the RDL file from one report to the other simply using a text editor like Notepad of TextPad. It will really open your eyes to a different wrinkle of report development. Until next time...