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Using SQL Reporting Services 2005 and Forms Authentication with the Whidbey/2.0 SQLMembershipProvider
December 5, 2005 / No Comments »
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.
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KPIUtil Tool Released
December 5, 2005 / No Comments »
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.
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My Top 10 RS Wish List
December 2, 2005 / No Comments »
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...
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Applied Microsoft Analysis Services 2005 is shipping
December 2, 2005 / No Comments »
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!
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RS 2005 ASP.NET Report Viewer and Custom Assemblies
November 30, 2005 / No Comments »
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...
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Report Builder and SSAS 2005 Known Issues
November 24, 2005 / No Comments »
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.
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Configuration error with stylesheets and RS 2005
November 24, 2005 / 1 Comment »
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=""/>
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Source code available
November 24, 2005 / No Comments »
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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Reporting Services 2005 Tips and Tricks Web Seminar
November 20, 2005 / No Comments »
WindowsITPro invited me to deliver a web seminar about RS 2005. Instead of picking up a particular area and focusing solely on it, this time I will be going for a “tips and tricks” type of session which will cover new ways to do things that were difficult if not impossible to implement with RS 2000. The topics will cover the three phases of the report lifecycle – authoring, management, and delivery. Unfortunately, due to technology constraints, I won’t be able to share my desktop and do live demos. Anyway, I think it is going to be an exciting session. I hope you will be able to make it.
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Reporting off ADO.NET datasets using the RS 2005 XML Extension
November 20, 2005 / 1 Comment »
In case you missed this little gem, RS 2005 comes with a brand new XML Extension which allows you to report off an XML data returned from an URL-addressable resource, such as an ASP.NET page or a web service. For example, suppose that you have a web method called GetOrders that return the customer orders as a typed dataset (table in my case) and has the following signature: [WebMethod] public CustomerOrders.SalesOrderHeaderDataTable GetOrders(int customerID) You can create a report from the returned dataset by using the RS 2005 XML dataset extension: Create a data source that uses the XML extension by selecting XML as the data source type. Enter the URL address of the web service in the connection string, e.g. # Once the data source is ready, create a dataset with the following query: <Query> <Method Namespace="http://tempuri.org/" Name="GetOrders"/> <SoapAction>http://tempuri.org/GetOrders</SoapAction> <ElementPath IgnoreNamespaces="true">GetOrdersResponse/GetOrdersResult/diffgram/DocumentElement/SalesOrderHeader</ElementPath> </Query> Unfortunately, the documentation stays shy...
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