• BIDS Integration Story in R2 – The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

    March 17, 2010 / No Comments »

    There was a huge discussion thread about the BIDS-Visual Studio integration story in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe where customers complained that BIDS got married with Visual Studio. This required switching both BI and code projects at the same if you want to have a solution with both project types. What has changed in R2? The good – Report Server projects in BIDS R2 can target either SQL Server 2008 or R2, as explained in this blog. There is no change to Analysis Services projects. If you have a Report Server project with RDL 2008 files, the BIDS Report Designer won't upgrade the report definitions. However, the moment you add a R2-specific feature, such as the new map region, BIDS will upgrade the report definition to R2 RDL. Therefore, if you want to play with R2 on your machine while the rest of the team is still on 2008 and...

  • Where is RDLOM in R2?

    March 9, 2010 / No Comments »

    After covering the cool new stuff in R2, it's time to talk about the uncool. One R2 change that really vexes me is RDLOM. RDLOM, short for Report Definition Language Object Model, lets developers program RDL in object-oriented way as opposed to using XML. RDLOM could save you a lot of effort when you have to meet more advanced requirements that involve pre-processing RDL. For example, in one of my projects we had to implement a wizard that would walk business users through steps to generate an ad-hoc report. Behind the scenes, the wizard would generate the report definition by using a custom RDLOM which we developed since back then Microsoft didn't have their own. I included a scaled-down version of our implementation in my TechEd 2007 code sample. Although it took us a while to get our RDLOM implemented, it turned out to be invaluable down the road. Since...

  • How Windows UAC Got Me Again

    March 2, 2010 / No Comments »

    User Access Control (UAC) is a feature of Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008 that prevents you from running applications with administrator rights even if you are a local admin on the box. Although I have to admit I hate UAC, I am convinced that it's better to have it around especially after my home desktop got infected a few months ago with a rootkit virus so badly that I had to restore the disk from a backup. So, UAC is a necessary evil. But since it's relatively new, not many application developers test for UAC and this can get you as it happened in the following story. A coworker complained that Reporting Services SharePoint integration doesn't work on a distributed environment where SharePoint is installed on the front end Windows 2008 server and the SharePoint configuration database is installed on a separate database server. As usual, my...

  • New Reporting Services Data Providers

    February 28, 2010 / No Comments »

    Two new data providers will be included in the SQL Server 2008 R2 release of Reporting Services, Microsoft SQL Azure and Microsoft SQL Server Parallel Data Warehouse, that will let you report from SQL Azure and SQL Server 2008 R2 Parallel Data Warehouse (code named Madison) databases respectively. I decided to take the Microsoft SQL Azure data provider for a spin. As you probably know by now, SQL Azure is a part of the Microsoft Windows Azure SaaS cloud offering. SQL Azure lets you host your SQL Server relational databases in the Microsoft data centers that provide scalability and fault tolerance services. This is great for companies of all sizes which don't have resources or expertise to purchase and configure expensive hardware and software in order bo build scalable and highly available solutions. IMO, SQL Azure will be increasingly important, especially after Reporting Services and Analysis Services become available on...

  • Beware Hidden Calculated Members

    January 18, 2010 / No Comments »

    Here is another one of those "by design" issues (see the Not All Calculated Members Are Born Equal blog for another recent gotcha) that are not documented but can sure waste you precious time figuring out. The issue was first submitted on connect.microsoft.com by Greg Galloway almost a year ago where it was left in an investigation phase (what can we do to get the SSAS team actually review the connect cases and post findings?). Then, I submitted a similar issue and official support case since I was 100% sure it was a bug and I needed a closure. Alas, Microsoft came back to declare it "by design": "…per feedback from several AS 2005 Beta customers, for compatibility with pre-existing AS 2000 behavior, AS 2005 RTM (and later releases) was changed to not include hidden calculated members in cell calculations and scopes (except when a hidden calculated member is explicitly...

  • Report Builder 3.0 Edit Sessions

    January 18, 2010 / No Comments »

    When Report Builder 2.0 shipped , it introduced local and server preview modes. If the report uses local references only, such an embedded data source(s), Report Builder 2.0 executes the query and renders the report locally just like the BIDS Report Designer. However, when the report uses a server reference, such as shared data source(s) or subreports that were saved on the server, Report Builder 2.0 would transparently upload and process the report on the server just like the Report Builder 1.0. Report Builder 3.0 improves the performance of server preview mode by introducing edit sessions. An edit session is implicitly created when the user runs the report for the first time. Behind the scenes, Report Builder 3.0 calls the new CreateReportEditSession API to instruct the server to create an edit session. The server caches the report dataset(s) in the ReportServerTempDB database (not in memory) and uses the cached data...

  • Report Builder 3.0 Enhancements in R2 and SharePoint 2010 Mode

    January 13, 2010 / 3 Comments »

    A couple of Report Builder enhancements in SharePoint 2010 integration mode caught my attention. First, Report Builder 3.0 now launches by default when the Open in Report Builder action is initiated inside SharePoint 2010. Previously, Report Builder 1.0 would be launched. Second, if the report includes a drillthrough action to another report, the action now works when the action is initiated from Report Builder 3.0 preview mode. As it turns out, a drillthrough action is forwarded directly to SharePoint. Previously, a report drillthrough action will result in an error because the Report Builder would attempt to resolve the action locally.

  • ReportService2010 Endpoint

    January 13, 2010 / No Comments »

    Here is a little gem for developers programming Reporting Services. SQL Server 2008 R2 brings a new web service endpoint, ReportService2010, which merges the functionalities of the ReportService2005 and ReportService2006 endpoints. The new endpoint can manage objects on a report server that that are configured for either native or SharePoint integrated mode. Previously, the ReportService2005 endpoint was used for managing objects on a report server that is configured for native mode and the ReportService2006 endpoint was used for managing objects on a report server that is configured for SharePoint integrated mode. This required code changes and retesting if the report server was re-configured in a different mode. These endpoints are now deprecated but still supported. The ReportService2010 endpoint includes the functionalities of both endpoints. When unsupported APIs in ReportService2010 are invoked, such as invoking the CreateLinkedReport API in SharePoint mode which doesn't support linked reports, the endpoint will return an...

  • Virtual Adventures

    January 7, 2010 / No Comments »

    Scenario: Mount base and differencing VHD disks using Windows Virtual PC on Windows 7 x64. Dude, did you run out of BI stuff to talk about? I didn't but I think other folks may benefit from my experience especially MCTs who have discovered that Windows 7 hasn't happened yet to the Microsoft Official Curriculum and resorted to all sorts of hacks to get Virtual Server 2005 or Lab Launcher working with Windows 7. In the process, I've learned a lot about the virtualization technology that goes beyond just mounting disks. OK, I have a hidden agenda to write this blog as well – I want to document these steps. So, I am preparing to teach 6326A - Implementing and Maintaining Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services in an instructor-led environment where I have to install the required software on the student's machine. After downloading the trainer resources, I have discovered...

  • Most Requested Features

    December 21, 2009 / No Comments »

    You can use the Microsoft Connect website to find most requested features. Unfortunately, the search doesn't let you specify a product so the search results may be related to other products. For example, searching on reporting services may bring in results from Analysis Services and reporting. Nevertheless, it was quite interesting to find the top voted suggestions. For example, the following query shows the top suggestions for Reporting Services (flip to the Suggestions tab): https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/SearchResults.aspx?KeywordSearchIn=2&SearchQuery=%22reporting%22+AND+%22services%22&FeedbackType=1&Scope=0&SortOrder=10&TabView=0&wa=wsignin1.0 Reporting Services-Recognize multiple result sets returned from a stored procedure – (50 votes) Merging / Linking datasets on report level (50 votes) – No 6 on my SSRS Top 10 wish list. SQL Reports should support stylesheets (43 votes) – No 9 on my list. Support for XML Paper Specification (XPS) Output Format (29 votes) – I am personally surprised about this one. Reporting Services Security Using Membership and Roles (29 votes), and so on

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