SSRS Nested Subreport Gotcha!

Recently I was working on a reporting solution for a client when I ran across an interesting problem. I was writing a report in SSRS using multiple nested subreports that would roll up into the report. This has been a fairly common approach that I've used in the past. The difference in this case was the number of nested subreports. Specifically I was using three levels of reports, all of which used some form of data binding. I ran into an issue where the "grand-child" report would not render.

It is easiest to explain the situation using images. There are three reports. A top level, "master" report that we will refer to as the Parent. Within the Parent report there is a sub report that we will refer to as the Child. And within the Child report there is a sub report that we will refer to as the GrandChild.

Reminder: If you develop WebForms, you should be doing this…

There are plenty of posts out there about using the aspnet_compiler.exe tool.

http://mikehadlow.blogspot.com/2008/05/compiling-aspx-templates-using.html
http://odetocode.com/blogs/scott/archive/2006/10/17/what-can-aspnet_compiler-exe-do-for-me.aspx

I’m not writing this to shed any new light on the subject. I'm writing this to remind developers that you should be using this tool… period.

Improving WebSql interaction using jQuery Deferred

I recently inherited a project that made heavy use of WebSql. Though it has been deprecated as a client side technology, this project was using it to create an offline web application that could be run on mobile devices. The immediate problem that I noticed with the project was that there was no consolidation of logic into a central JavaScript file. Each page included inline functions that essentially did the same thing, just using different queries. After profiling the site I realized that this "distribution" of logic also led to multiple instances of the web sql database being instantiated.... which, as you guessed, is a problem.

To address this issue I started by creating a wrapper for the Web SQL functions that would make it easier to work with the technology. The wrapper removes the work of instantiating the database object and managing the transaction, and it uses jQuery Deferred objects to make it easier to work with the results returned by the Web SQL calls.

A Multi-Term jQuery Mobile Listview Filter

If you've done any development with jQuery Mobile you've likely used the Listview Widget. It's a handy little component that makes rendering list data a breeze. Even better, it has a built in search filter that you can enable by simply decorating your list element with data-filter="true"

The default behavior of the Listview Widget's filter is to match on a single term. The moment you add an additional space into your search string, look out! But, if you need multi-term search behavior in your filter, it's easy to add.

Quick and Compliant Email Templates using Razor

Even in today's hyper connected world where you can Tweet someone's TV or Instagram your refrigerator, it seems like when it comes to business, Email is still king. If you need a simple, effective, and fast way to create a templated email in code, I suggest using Razor as your templating engine.

If you've done any MVC development since version 3, you've likely used the new Razor View Engine. Its concise and semantic, and it gets out of the way of your html. Best of all, it's not dependent on MVC, so you can re-purpose it in many different ways.

There are already a few existing projects that surround Razor templates. In this example I'm using the following project, but you can use whatever you prefer to get the job done:

https://github.com/volkovku/RazorTemplates

I like the RazorTemplates project because like Razor itself, the syntax in the RazorTemplates project is concise and semantic.