Archive for category: Blog

An interesting question has pop up on the Katmai RS 2008 discussion list today about how to implement a “green bar” group-level report that alternates background color for all rows in a group instance instead of doing this for each row. I attach the report sample I posted. What makes it interesting is that it demonstrates report variables – a new feature in RS 2008.

Before you start analyzing it, you should know that expression evaluation rules in RS 2008 have changed as a result of the new on-demand processing model. As a result, state in class-level instance variables is discarded as you page through the report which makes maintaining state trickier between page requests. However, RS 2008 introduces report variables that guarantee one-time evaluation semantics. I know this may sound to you like Greek, so let me jump into the implementation details:

1. The report has a EvenRow code-behind function that toggles each time it’s executed.

2. In the Category group (double-click it to access its properties), an EvenRow group level variable is defined that invokes the EvenRow function once per each group instance.

3. The rest is easy. I set the BackgroundColor property for each textbox to use this variable. BTW, the report uses the SSAS Adventure Works cube. [View:/CS/cfs-file.ashx/__key/CommunityServer.Blogs.Components.WeblogFiles/blog/greenbargroup.zip]

Here is an awesome tip courtesy to the Craig Guyer’s I Command Thee blog. You probably know that Visual Studio supports project configurations. In BIDS 2008, you can automate report deployment with configurations. For example, the following command deploys the solution using the settings of the QA configuration.

C:\>devenv “C:\Books\RS2008\Code\ch03\Reports\Reports.sln” /deploy QA

This is especially useful when automating deployment to SharePoint because you need to change the report definitions to use absolute paths to external resources, such as shared data sources. BIDS deployment can handle this for you and save you writing custom code to automate deployment.

While we are on the SharePoint deployment topic with BIDS, one nasty bug was introduced late in the SQL Server 2008 cycle that prevents you deploying folders that contain a space, such as Data Sources, to SharePoint from BIDS. When you attempt to do this, you get:

Error rsInvalidItemName : The name of the item ‘Data%20Sources’ is not valid. The name must be less than 128 characters long. The name must not start with slash; other restrictions apply.

If the folder already exists, deployment is successful. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, this bug won’t get fixed in the RTM timeframe. As a workaround, don’t use spaces in the target folders, e.g.; DataSources instead of Data Sources.

One of the new features in Reporting Services 2008 that debuted in the SQL Server 2008 RC0 build is the enhanced textbox report item. In previous releases, if you wanted to mix static and dynamic expression-based text, you either needed multiple textboxes or a Visual Basic expression to concatenate strings together. The first approach led to textbox “explosion”. The disadvantage of the second approach was that you couldn’t format string fragments inside the same textbox independently.

In Reporting Services 2008, the textbox report item has been redesigned to support multiple bands of text. The screenshot shows a report title of a sales order report. In the past, you would need two textboxes (or three if you wanted different formatting for the sales order number). You may be surprised to find that the entire title is implemented as a single textbox with two paragraphs. The second paragraph combines static text (Order #:) with dynamic text ([SalesOrderNumber]), which defines a placeholder for a dataset field value. Each fragment can have its own format settings. Thanks to these enhancements, you’ll find that by moving to Reporting Services 2008, you need fewer textboxes and you need to write less often expressions that concatenate text. Moreover, the new textbox lets you implement report solutions, such as mail merge, that were difficult or impossible to implement with previous releases.

Many report authors will rejoice learning that the textbox report item now supports a subset of HTML tags for formatting the text content. This is also known as rich formatting (not be confused with RTF which is not supported). You can import static HTML text or bind the textbox to a dataset field. For instance, if the dataset field includes HTML tags, such as <b>SO50750</b>, you can configure the textbox to interpret these tags and display the sales order number in bold.