Provide the data source (C#)

A report is only as good as the data it serves. The data source defines where and how you get your data.

You are responsible for creating the code that serves as the data source. The Genero Report Writer expects XML; your data source needs to generate XML. You must define the data model and serialize it to XML. You can either generate the code using the Business Application Modeler, or you can write the code by hand.

For C# applications, we identify two different ways to specify the data source:
  • Create a data model.

    Objects act as models. A suitable object is any object that can be serialized by the .NET class System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer. The data schema can be generated from the data models using the xsd.exe tool, which is available with the .NET development toolkit.

    To generate the data model, see Quick Start: Generate a .NET report application.

  • Feed report data to an XmlTextWriter.
    The XmlTextWriter directly creates the XML data.
    Important:

    With this method, the data schema must be written manually.