Report Templates

One of the most important aspect of report development in a Business/Corporate setting is delivering reports with consistent look and feel. In order to solve this problem, one can create standard report templates which have a standard company logo, Page header and page footers. In these templates one can also include any customcode that is standard across all reports. There can also be managed code/dll references which has standard function calls that can be used during report development. These templates are usually stored in the following path (For visual Studio 2008): C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\ProjectItems\ReportProject. The use of templates really in standardized report development, bringing a consistent look and feel for reports. In SQL Server 2008 R2 there are features like report gallery where one can store standardized images/logos and report parts.