Report Preview

The preview function of the edited report, in the Web designer, has two modes: HTML (preview as HTML file) and PDF (preview as PDF file). The picture below shows the Preview submenu item of the Web designer main menu:

After selecting one of two modes, a report will be shown is the browser window. If,  when report rendering, the errors occur, then alert messages will be shown in the separate browser window. To preview a report in the web designer window can be done by switching the Preview tab in the designer. The picture below the Web designer tabs:

To preview the report data are required. By default, data are taken from the Dictionary of the edited report. If necessary, they can be overridden. There is a sample code below using what data can be overridden:

C#:
 
protected void StiWebDesigner1_GetPreviewDataSet(object sender,

                    StiWebDesigner.StiPreviewDataSetEventArgs e)

{
   DataSet data = new DataSet();

   data.ReadXml("D:\\Demo.xml");

   data.ReadXmlSchema("D:\\Demo.xsd");

   e.PreviewDataSet = data;
}
 

VB.NET:
 
Protected Sub StiWebDesigner1_GetPreviewDataSet(ByVal sender As Object,

                   ByVal e As StiWebDesigner.StiPreviewDataSetEventArgs)

   Dim data As DataSet = New DataSet()

   data.ReadXml("D:\\Demo.xml")

   data.ReadXmlSchema("D:\\Demo.xsd")

   e.PreviewDataSet = data

End Sub

As seen from code, data are taken from XML and XSD files. The same way exists for other data sources.