Basic Report Design - Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - page 92

Figure 4-29
The remainder of this chapter focuses on individual design elements and concepts rather than the over-
all process. You will apply this information in another walk-through exercise in the chapter where
designing more advanced reports is discussed.
Report Definition Language
One very compelling aspect of this product is that the definition of each report is managed in a standard,
text-based file format called Report Definition Language (RDL) . An RDL file is an XML document with a
standard definition for markup tags that define all of the properties for a report. All objects added to a
report in the Report Designer and the related property settings result in entries being made to the RDL
content for that report. This simple approach makes it easy for independent software vendors and cus-
tom solution developers to generate a report definition from a variety of sources and tools. It also makes
it easy for report designers and developers to open the report definition in a text editor to make changes
outside of the report designer. Contrast this with the proprietary binary formats used in other popular
reporting products.
As an example, the following is a small snippet of an RDL file content describing a Textbox report item:
<Textbox Name=”textbox1”>
<Style>
<PaddingLeft>2pt</PaddingLeft>
<PaddingBottom>2pt</PaddingBottom>
<PaddingTop>2pt</PaddingTop>
<PaddingRight>2pt</PaddingRight>
</Style>