Great Plains Report Pack
Microsoft has come up with a new Report Pack for Great Plains which uses SQL Server Reporting Services and comes with a number of report templates.
Using SQL Reporting Services 2005 and Forms Authentication with the Whidbey/2.0 SQLMembershipProvider
As you probably know, when the RS Windows-based security doesn’t meet your requirements, you can replace it with custom security. Not many products out there allow you do this. In hist blog, Russell Christopher explains how you can use the Whidbey/2.0 SQLMembershipProvider with custom security.
KPIUtil Tool Released
Courtesy to the Marco Russo’s blog, I’ve learned that Microsoft released a KPIUtil tool for Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005.The tool allows users to export KPIs from both a Microsoft Office Business Scorecard Manager 2005 server and a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services server.
My Top 10 RS Wish List
In the spirit of the season, I compiled a list of the top 10 things that I would love Santa to implement in the next release of Reporting Services (although it may look like this won’t happen next year :-). I purposely excluded enhancements to the RS data regions since it should be relatively easily to compile a list of the feature most folks complain about in the public ng.
- Exposing the intrinsic RDL object model to manipulate data regions and items programmatically. It will be great if this works similar to the ASP.NET user controls where controls can be added, changed, or removed at runtime. For example, custom code should be able to reference a table region to add, remove, and bind columns at runtime.
- Server-side events, e.g. OnReportRender, OnBodyRender, OnPrint, OnRegionRender, etc.
- A supported way to maintain state in custom code.
- Exposing the report datasets to custom code to allow programmatic navigation and data retrieval, e.g. looping through the dataset rows.
- Decoupling the Report Builder Designer and exposing it as a reusable .NET control which can be embedded in applications. Ideally, a developer should be able to pass the semantic model (or metadata described in a different format) the designer. The output of the WYSWIG manipulation should be returned in the form of RDL.
- Enhancing the Report Builder Designer to support custom code and plugging in custom function libraries.
- Simplifying CAS security to the three levels supported by SQL Server and SSAS – Safe, External Access, and Unsafe.
- Binding server-side reports to ADO.NET datasets.
- A conditional page break.
- The XML extension should support XML schemas and cast the column types to data types according to the schema.
Please feel free to add to the list and happy holidays!
Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 is shipping
My book Applied Analysis Services 2005 is printed and shipped to the distributor. The paper copy can be purchased from the distributor website. Hopefully, it will make it to retailers (Amazon, B&N, etc.) by the month’s end.
Happy data analyzing!
RS 2005 ASP.NET Report Viewer and Custom Assemblies
There was an interesting post on the Reporting Services public newsgroup about an issue with the RS 2005 ASP.NET Report Viewer and custom assemblies. In a nutshell, the issue was that if you want to invoke a custom assembly from the ASP.NET Report Viewer, you need to deploy it to GAC.
Because of a bug in the RTM version, copying custom assemblies to the web app bin folder will not work. This bug will be fixed in a service pack. Currently, for web applications, you have to copy custom assemblies to GAC. This issue doesn’t apply to the WinForm version of the Report Viewer. In the case of WinForms apps, custom assemblies can be in the same directory as the application’s .EXE file; no need to copy to GAC.
An example of how the WinForm version of the Report Viewer can be configured to work with custom assemblies can be found on the Report Viewer home page. This page is maintained and monitored by the Rajeev Karunakaran, a Program Manager for the Report Viewer controls.
Report Builder and SSAS 2005 Known Issues
The RS 2005 Report Builder can automatically create a semantic model from an SSAS 2005 cube so your end users can generate ad hoc reports. However, it turns out that some of the SSAS 2005 features are not supported by design. More information can be found in this KB article.
Configuration error with stylesheets and RS 2005
If you install RS 2005 and the default web site has a web.config file that uses the new ASP.NET 2.0 themes feature, when you attempt to run the Report Manager, you will get:
Theme <theme name> cannot be found in the application or global theme directories
The reason for this error is that the styleSheetTheme element in the root web.config is automatically inherited by the nested web.config files. This error is not RS-specific. It happens with any nested web site because ASP.NET attempts to located that folder and apply it to the nested web site. To fix the error, break the inheritance chain by changing the styleSheeTheme in the nested Report Manager web.config file, as follows:
<pages validateRequest=”false” styleSheetTheme=””/>
Source code available
The source code for my book “Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005” is available for download. It can also be downloaded by clicking on the Source code link found on the book resource page. To get the entire code, download the amas_all_code_in_one.zip fle. Alternatively, to get the code for a given chapter only, download the corresponding zip file.
Happy holidays!
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