Report Solution Patterns and Recipes - Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - page 333

Figure 7-79
Figure 7-80 shows what my gauge image file looks like after this code runs and renames the file from its
original name. This StreamID is what I call a BUN, or a Big Ugly Number.
Figure 7-80
So what can you accomplish using this technique? Well, think about all of the useful things you can do
with image content. Applications like Visio and MapPoint can easily output complex data to image files
or file streams for use in reports.
Here are a couple of brief examples from a solution using the Microsoft MapPoint Server subscription
service. Using Web Service calls, address and location information for some of the Hitachi Consulting
offices are sent to the MapPoint Server Web Service. This returns a single image byte stream in much the
same way as the Dundas Gauge control did in the previous example. The resulting map image, shown in
Figure 7-81, is rendered to a report in a similar manner.