Tag: "reporting services"

Standardizing and Centralizing Report Design (or: creating style sheets for reports) Part 1: The possibilities

While SQL Server 2011 (Denali) is at horizon, bringing up many changes in the way reports will be developed, Developers using SQL Server 2005, 2008 or 2008 R2 are still faced with on problem from the very first report on: How can I make not only development easier by having a template for reports at hand, but also, how to manage it.

Whereas in the area of webdesign, it is absolutely common to have a (cascading) style sheet to be referred to in all website-documents, in reporting services this concept does not exist.
While this is very annoying and it seems that it should be easy to implement at first, one has to remember, that Reporting Services does not just render to html, but at the same time Reporting Services have to be equally prepared to render Reports to Excel-Files, pdf-Files, TIFF-Image-Files, among others. So using the same technique as websites do, would simply to narrow.
There is a case at Microsoft Connect, where you can vote on this feature to get implemented in an upcoming version: http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/253976/add-style-or-stylesheet-or-template-to-reporting-services-reports

In short: In Reporting Services there is no such one thing as ONE and only style sheet that does all magic for you.
This blog-series is intended to show you the existing techniques, and how to combine them. In the end your effectiveness in creating an managing Reports style-wise can be improved by a magnitude. But: there is work to do beforehand.

I spend quite a while, reading other blogs, the rare documentation and doing my own tests. Finally I had the honor of presenting a whole session on this matter at the European PASS Conference 2009.

In the following posts I will concentrate on the existing techniques I identified as the most useful techniques and combination.

Those are the techniques I will focus on:

The Basic Techniques:

Custom methods:

  • Using Custom Code
  • Using an Assembly
  • Using plain T-SQL

Combining techniques:

  • Style Template + Layout Template
  • Style Template + Custom style + Layout Template

Reporting Services 2008 R2 techniques

  • Shared DataSet
  • Report Part

 

I also tested using XML-Files as well as making a webservice-call to get Style-data, but this turned out to be rather pathological and is therefore left out from further consideration.

In the next Part of the series, I will show how to create and use a Layout-Template.

 

Andreas

Sarpedon Quality Lab

SQLCon Session “Anspruchsvollere Berichte mit Reporting Services 2008”

Auf der diesjährigen SQLCon in Mainz hielt ich die Session Anspruchsvollere Berichte mit Reporting Services 2008.

Link: http://it-republik.de/dotnet/sqlcon09/sessions/?tid=1259#session-10624

Themen waren:

Tablix

–Mehrere Gruppen auf einer Achse
–Static Header – wie geht das jetzt?
–Listen (gruppieren)

Tablix_with_multiple_Groups

Charts

–Dynamisches Wachstum
–Trendlines einbauen, Pareto-Charts
–Multiple Charts

dynamic_chart_size

chart_calculates_series

Gauges

–Varianten und Customizing

Gauges

Kombinationen

–Charts und Gauges innerhalb von Tablix (Microcharts)

Microcharts

Weitere „Angenehmlichkeiten“

–Felder in Page Header & Footer
–Placeholder

Hinweise auf Weitere interessante Neuerungen

Ausblick SQL Server 2008 R2

–Map Control
–Componentizing Reports

Map

 

bis zum Nächsten mal,

 

Andreas Wolter

 

Sarpedon Quality Lab

Reporting Services 2005 x64 Fehlermeldungen bei der Installation unter Windows Server - mit Lösungen

bei der Einrichtung von Reporting Services 2005 Version x64 traten in der Reihenfolge folgende Fehler auf, zu welchen ich die Lösungen hier gerne hinterlegen möchte:

1)

"The virtual directory could not be created. The previously set virtual directory will still be used."

Details: "System.IO.FileNotFoundException:
at System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ThrowExceptionForHRInternal(Int32 errorCode, IntPtr errorInfo)
at System.Management.ManagementObject.InvokeMethod(String methodName, ManagementBaseObject inParameters, InvokeMethodOptions options)
at ReportServicesConfigUI.WMIProvider.RSReportServerAdmin.CreateVirtualDirectory(String virtualDirectory, String path)"

 

Lösung:

das lag daran, das  ASP.Net VOR dem .Net Framework 2.0 installiert war

(meine Quelle: http://www.bokebb.com/dev/english/2027/posts/2027133704.shtml )

Nach einer Reparatur-Installation des .Net Framework 2.0 lief es tadellos.

 

 2)

Als nächstes kam folgende Fehlermeldung auf der Website http://Servername/Reports:

"The ReportServerVirtualDirectory element is missing"

Lösung:

in der Datei RSWebApplication.config im Verzeichnis "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportManager"

im Knoten <ReportServerVirtualDirectory></ReportServerVirtualDirectory> den Servernamen wie folgt eintragen:

<ReportServerUrl>http://ServerName/Reportserver</ReportServerUrl>

 

3)

 Es folgte ein HTTP: 500 Fehler "The request failed with HTTP status 503: Service Unavailable."

 Lösung:

 iisreset in der Kommandozeile

 

so, ich hoffe das hilft dem Nächsten, etwas Zeit zu sparen

 

Andreas Wolter Training & Consulting

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