As I mentioned in a previous blog, Visual Studio 2005 SP1 includes updated versions of both the WinForms and ASP.NET versions of the Report Viewer control. Microsoft has just released full and upgrade redistributables for the Report Viewer SP1.
Read articleDocumenting the UDM schema is a common requirement but to the best of my knowledge neither Microsoft nor third-party vendors provide schema generators. While you are waiting for a commercial tool to fill in the gap, you can roll out your own schema generators. Thanks to the Analysis Management Objects (AMO) library, this task is remarkably simple to implement. For example, here is a .NET…
Read articleOne must-read SSRS resource which I missed was the excellent article "Get More Out of SQL Server Reporting Services Charts" by Robert Bruckner from the Reporting Services dev team. Now I have something to point folks to for how-to chart-related questions.
Read articleMVP Summit is over and I am back in Atlanta. I had great time meeting other MVPs, MS employees, and learning about the future in MS terms. I posted pictures from the event. Some interesting statistics given to us by Microsoft: The MVP Summit is the largest event held at the Microsoft campus 1889 attendees were registered to attend 88 countries will be represented (based…
Read articleJoining some 2,000 other MVPs from all around the world, I am heading tomorrow for Seattle to participate in the annual MVP Global Summit. It's time to shake hands, take pictures, put names to faces, and soak up as much as possible about what's coming up in Katmai (the next SQL Server release). Unfortunately, the last part is under strict NDA so I won't be…
Read articleAlthough not a common practice, UDM supports defining text-based calculated members. For example, here is an useless but valid text-based calculated member: Create Member CurrentCube.[Measures].[Hello] As "Hello"; Much to my surprise, a text-based member won't show up in Report Builder. That's because the Report Builder defaults the member's data type to float and the text is simply "lost" when the report is run. How does…
Read articleThe initial release of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2) contained an issue that caused maintenance plan cleanup tasks to remove data before the specified cleanup interval. Install this update to correct the interpretation of existing cleanup task intervals, and to avoid this issue in new cleanup tasks. After you install this item, you may have to restart your computer. If you already installed…
Read articleOne of my favorite modeling tricks when I need an UDM calculated measure is implementing it as a regular measure by creating a named calculated column in DSV. I set the expression of the named calculation column to NULL to minimize storage. This approach has a couple of advantages: It allows you to set a default aggregation function, e.g. SUM(). In comparison, a calculated member…
Read articleMicrosoft has just let me know that my proposal for a TechEd 2007 breakout session has been approved. I've been honored to present Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services for four consecutive years at TechEd. This time, I will share practical lessons and tips harvested from report-enabling a real-life application. Here is the formal session description (not yet on the TechEd website): One of the most…
Read article
