As with report designs, a library can be created using either the New option under the Navigator or the File menu. This is nice as it does not deviate from the expected behavior. In the following example, we are going to create a new Report Project called Classic Cars Library and create a new library using it.

Now that we have a library, we need to add a few components to it. With the reports that we have created throughout the book, we have used a consistent data source, the Classic Cars Sample Database. This would make a good candidate for a library item.

In the following example, we will add a data source to a library.

Now we have a data source in a library. This was easy to do. Most of this should be familiar as it is the same steps to add to a report design.

In our reports, we will want to add in simple report headers containing a logo for the Classic Cars Company, a company title line, and a report title line. The report title line will be populated by a report parameter so that the design of the header is consistent, but the title will be dynamic.

The finished component will look like the following image:

We now have two components stored in a library—a report header and a data source. How do you consume them. Well, that's what we are going to look at next. Using elements in a library is fairly straightforward. We only need to use the library in a report design that is stored in a project, and we are ready to go. We will look at how to do this in the next example.

In the previous example, we must have noticed that when we preview the report, date is incorrect. In fact, it is showing us the HTML markup, not an actual date, which isn't right. The problem is that any report that uses this report header will suffer from the same problem. Now, we could fix these in each of the reports themselves; however, the fix would be local to that report only. We would surely like this fix to trickle down to all reports that are using these items. In order for that to happen, we need to edit the library itself.

In the example that we just discussed, the change made in the report will take precedence over the change made in the library, while the deleted line will not be displayed in the report as the change will trickle down. It can be inferred from the following screenshot that the local change to the company title take precedence over the library changes, but the deleted date line shows in both.

So far in this chapter, we have looked at developing and publishing components into a report library from scratch. We then looked at how reports could consume those libraries and link in those components. Next, we looked at editing the libraries and having them trickle down to reports.

So, what happens when we have a report we have developed and there are portions we want to share with others; how do you go about publishing these components to libraries?

Fortunately, there is an easy way to do this. From the context menu, we can right-click on an element and add it to a library.

The next example will show us how to add report components from a report to a library. We will create a basic query to retrieve customer information, which we will use later to combine with a second dataset to have a master/detail type report.

The problem with this method is that the dataset and the report parameter are both two separate instances from the report design files and the report libraries. The way to link them is to delete the instances in the report and consume them using the steps described earlier in this chapter.