I had an idea today that using the newly released ReportViewer 2010 controls might help with an unusual rendering issue we’re having with a web page when displaying very large reports.

Turns out that you can use Report Viewer 2010 with Visual Studio 2008, though I did have to copy the files out of the GAC. Make sure you update the assembly references in the project file, web.config and also any .aspx pages so that they refer to Version=10.0.0.0.

Firing up the site to view one of the reports then resulted in the following error message:

“Remote report processing requires Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services or later”

Checking the current MSDN documentation for Configuring ReportViewer for Remote Processing does indeed state that “to use a server report, you must have access to a SQL Server 2008 or later Reporting Services report server”. Contrast that with the Visual Studio 2008 version of the same page which says SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services was the minimum.

Unfortunately in this case Reporting Services are still on 2005, but when that changes, using Report Viewer 2010 will be a viable option.