Can SQL Express Reporting Services generate Word documents from RDL

Question

I know I can generate PDF reports with SQL Reporting Service (even SQL Express can do this) and I can do Word documents with SQL Developer edition. Since my dev box is SQL Developer and my website uses SQL Express (I know, it's far from ideal) I would like to know if the reporting service that is included with SQL Express can generate Word documents as an output.

Anyone who has experience with this?

Answer 1

Unless you have existing reports that need to be rendered in Word format, the Open XML Format SDK may be a better choice than Reporting Services (which I don't think can do that anyways, at least not in SQL 2005).

Advantages: no Office installation needed, nothing to install but the SDK, no Reporting Services needed.

Edit:

2008 does render Word and I did not read anything about not all formats being supported in the Express edition. Another light-weight option may be the 2008 Report Viewer Control, which apparently can render Word documents as well.

Answer 2

I'm running SQL Server 2008R2 with the 2007 Office System Driver installed. I'm able to import from xls and create reports that output into word without having office installed or paying for Aspose. If you want to create rdl reports from word documents, that's where Aspose makes their money.

Answer 3

I doubt that SQL Server Express itself can do that but you can definitely purchase a commercial tool to do so. As an example take a look Aspose Words.NET for example.

Answer 4

We have used Aspose in production systems that required the final documents to be formatted in Korean. It worked like a charm.