Observed Signal · Apr 5, 2026 · Technical Release · Source: DEV Community · Impact: 1/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Preview RDLC Reports Without Deploying to Business Central
A developer describes building a WPF tool (RdlcRendererWpf / RDLC Report Tester) that loads a .rdlc file and Business Central XML data locally, renders a PDF via ReportViewerCore.NETCore, and displays it with Web — eliminating the repetitive build/deploy cycle to Business Central for report design iterations. The post documents failed attempts to use Visual Studio's designer, implementation details (DataTable conversion, type inference including dd/MM/yyyy date parsing), and packaging/installer issues (Inno Setup preprocessor/encoding, PublishSingleFile native DLL extraction, Web user-data folder permissions). Full source is published at github.com/stackcollider/rdlc-report-tester.
Developer productivity tooling for Business Central RDLC report design; useful for ERP/reporting developers but limited industry-wide impact outside that niche.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Author built a WPF application that accepts .rdlc and Business Central XML to render PDF previews locally without deploying to Business Central.
- Rendering pipeline uses ReportViewerCore.NETCore to create a PDF from a DataTable and displays it via Microsoft Web.
- Business Central supplies all fields as strings, requiring custom column type inference and explicit date parsing for formats like dd/MM/yyyy.
- Packaged installer uses Inno Setup; fixes included disabling PublishSingleFile so native DLLs sit alongside the exe and directing Web user data to AppData to avoid Program Files write-permission crashes.
- Full source code is available at github.com/stackcollider/rdlc-report-tester.
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