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SQL Server 2008 Available on August Price List
July 9, 2008 / No Comments »
Courtesy to Francois Ajenstat, Director of Product Management for Microsoft SQL Server, we know that SQL Server 2008 is on the August price list. What this probably means according to my interpretation is that the SQL Server 2008 RTM date is close. More than likely, SQL Server 2008 will be released in August.
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Textbox on Steroids
June 19, 2008 / No Comments »
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...
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SQL Server 2008 RC0 Product Samples Refreshed
June 11, 2008 / No Comments »
Microsoft has refreshed the product samples and AdventureWorks databases. I still have to figure out what's the AdventureWorksAS2008 database that is not released yet.
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Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack RC0, June 2008
June 10, 2008 / No Comments »
Today, Microsoft released an updated feature pack for SQL Server 2008 RC0. Among other things, it includes: A web downloadable installer for Report Builder 2.0 which is not included anymore with the SQL Server 2008 setup An updated version of the RS add-in for SharePoint Analysis Services 10.0 OLE DB Provider
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SQL Server 2008 Release Candidate 0 (RC0)
June 7, 2008 / No Comments »
Microsoft declared build #1442.32 to be the official SQL 2008 RC0 build and made it publicly available. Key SSRS improvements in this build: Rich text formatting. You can now format the text inside a textbox with different styles. Report Wizard to let the user auto-generate the report definition. Fully functional MDX Query Designer. An updated build of the Report Builder 2.0 (aka Report Designer Preview) will be available via a web download. The URL link is not known at this point.
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BI Salary Survey
May 20, 2008 / No Comments »
Not sure how much your BI expertise is worth? The 2008 TDWI Salary, Roles, and Responsibilities Report TDWI survey may help.
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Intelligencia Query
May 15, 2008 / No Comments »
Chris Webb, a fellow MVP and MDX guru, who's blog is a must-read for all SSAS junkies, was kind enough to let me take a look at the Intelligencia Query product he's been working on for a while with Andrew Wiles. Chris announced the product back in April which is now selling as a commercial offering. Now, lots of things have been said about the current state of the SSRS-SSAS integration, which is to say the least wanting. In a previous blog, I wrote "In my opinion, the biggest challenge the Microsoft BI initiative faces today is the inadequate support for Analysis Services." Alas, we won't witness an improved SSRS-SSAS integration in SQL Server 2008 as Microsoft decided to focus on other areas and priorities. Rest assured though that Microsoft understands the importance of this integration scenario. I personally have voiced my concerns on a few occasions and have put...
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SSAS HTTP Connectivity and SharePoint
May 12, 2008 / No Comments »
Scenario You won't enable SSAS HTTP connectivity via a SharePoint site. Issue You followed the instructions in the Configuring HTTP Access to SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 whitepaper but you get " Failed to start monitoring directory changes" error when you try to access the SSAS server by its pump URL, such as http://www.adventure-works/olap/msmdpump.dll. Solution Ignore the step where you had to create an olap pool and assign the OLAP vroot to it. Instead, assign the vroot to the same IIS application pool as the one the SharePoint site belongs to, such as SharePoint -80. In addition, make sure you enable the web extension to the pump dll, as explained in the above article. If you have created non-domain Windows accounts on the server for testing, make sure that the server and local Windows accounts (the one the user will use to log in to...
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Sharing Lost Reports with Web Users
May 10, 2008 / No Comments »
Scenario You need to configure a SharePoint site integrated with Reporting Services for Internet access. In our case, the end users would authenticate with Windows security by using local Windows account created on the web server. Issues Report URLs reference the machine NetBIOS name and fail to execute with "The path of the item '<path' is not valid. The full path must be less than 260 characters long; other restrictions apply". Same happens when Report Builder tries to load models. Solution This one took a few hours to solve: Since Reporting Services 2008 only supports access from SharePoint URLs in the default zone, change the public URL of the default zone (SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration -> Operations -> Alternate Access Mappings) to the web server Internet URL, such as http://www.adventure-works.com/. This will take care of the report URLs which now should include the server Internet address. However, requesting reports would...
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Tricksy Parameter Prompts
April 21, 2008 / 9 Comments »
Q: How to make the darn parameter drop-down list wider in HTMLViewer? HTMLViewer is the Report Manager control that displays the report when you view the report. A: HTMLViewer supports limited customization via a CSS stylesheet. Copy HTMLViewer.css to MyHTMLViewer.css in the same folder (Reporting Services\ReportServer\Styles). Note that the actual folder path varies between SQL Server versions. Add the following CSS style to MyHTMLViewer.css SELECT { font-size: 8pt; font-family: Verdana; width:200px } As a result, all SELECT elements on the page (all dropdowns, such as parameter prompts, zoom, export) will pick up these settings. Configure the server to use the custom stylesheet by one of these options: If you want to apply the custom styles to all reports, add a new HTMLViewerStyleSheet element to the rsreportserver.config file, such as: <Configuration> ... <HTMLViewerStyleSheet>MyStyleSheet</HTMLViewerStyleSheet> ... </Configuration> Note that due to an unfortunate bug, the HTMLViewerStyleSheet setting doesn't work with February CTP of...
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