Mat Stephen's SQL Server WebLog : Reporting Services

SQL 2005 Metadata Samples Toolkit and whitepaper now available

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 20:14:00 GMT

Reposted 10/1/06 to include in 'free tools' category

I'm constantly asked "what's Microsoft doing about metadata and do we have a solution."

In the old days (SQl 2000 and 7), Microsoft provided Meta Data Services, a platform designed to help tools and applications manage metadata and information models more effectively. It included the Open Information Model (OIM). A core model of sharable and reusable type descriptions. Microsoft worked with the Meta Data Coalition to publish the Open Information Model as an industry metadata model standard. Initially it was warmly received. However, soon after, a second set of companies in the Object Management Group proposed the Common Warehouse Metamodel (CWM) as a second standard for metadata. Metadata was everywhere!

But the excitement over cross-industry metadata models eventually wore off. For a variety of reasons, ISVs started to move away from industry-wide models and focused on point-to-point mappings between products (primarily focusing on XML-based exchange). The Meta Data Coalition merged with the OMG and cross-industry metadata modeling efforts have been stalled for several years. The world discovered Enterprise repositories and cross-product metadata models are very hard to integrate into existing computing environments (lots of custom applications and tools) and require lots of care and feeding for effective deployment and maintenance (i.e. lots of consulting).

So, Meta Data Services was deprecated in SQL 2005.

With SQL Server 2005 XML is every where, its used to describe all the really useful objects in the product stack. Consequently the possibilities to satisfy many of the needs, that metadata repositories are touted to solve, can now be easily solved by reporting off the XML that describes so many of the key components used in (Microsoft SQL Server) data warehousing (ie used by SSIS, SSRS and SSAS). The important aspects are data lineage, data dictionaries, auditing and impact analysis.

We are very pleased to announce the first incarnation of the "SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Metadata Samples Toolkit" http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=11DAA4D1-196D-4F2A-B18F-891579C364F4&displaylang=en. Along with the associated whitepaper http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=182BD330-0189-450C-A2FE-DF5C132D9DA9&displaylang=en it should now be possible to satisfy many of your metadata needs - simply and essentially for free!

The whitepaper also describes the importance of the new Extended Properties that can be applied to objects within the database - these can be used to store all sorts of business information including the all important data lineage and data definition.

New SQL 2005 code samples available

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 02 Jan 2006 20:15:00 GMT

I guess now the pressure is off to release the product we'll see more useful samples comming out of corp; here's a link to the latest December update:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/sql/downloads/samples/default.aspx

Feature Pack for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - November 2005

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 20:47:00 GMT

Overview

The Feature Pack is a collection of standalone install packages that provide additional value for SQL Server 2005. It includes:

Latest versions of redistributable components for SQL Server 2005
Latest versions of add-on providers for SQL Server 2005
Latest versions of backward compatibility components for SQL Server 2005

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=d09c1d60-a13c-4479-9b91-9e8b9d835cdc&displaylang=en

Microsoft .NET Data Provider for SAP

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 04 Oct 2005 15:07:00 GMT

After my recent SQL 2k5 BI session, here at TVP Reading, I had an enquiry asking for more info regarding the SAP provider I showed in the list of providers available to SQL Server Integration Services . The best public information I can find is @ http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms216599. The provider isn't publicly available at the moment but when the product is released it will be made available for download, and will not be in the box. I don't know a lot about SAP R3 but I believe this provider will also allow access to BW - I'll check, if it doesn't I'll post an edit in the next few days.

Project REAL—Business Intelligence in Practice - great website!

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 18:27:00 GMT

For sometime a group of Program Managers from the SQL BI team have been working with a customer, Barnes and Noble, to produce a SQL BI solution for their data warehouse and analysis needs using SQL 2005. The leasons learnt from all their work is being continually published to this website http://www.microsoft.com/sql/bi/projectreal/default.mspx in the form of webcasts and whitepapers. With so many new tools and functionality to play with in SQL 2005, I have found their work (what I've seen of it so far), to be invaluable.

Reporting Services: Calling an aspx page from a report and passing a parameter

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 19 Aug 2005 13:24:00 GMT

Sudhi recently asked me how to call an aspx page from a report and pass a parameter held in a textbox, or other control.

My solution is:

Drag a textbox control on to the report and enter the value "2005/07/28/408325" (without the the quotes) in to it. If this is a new report the textbox should be called textbox1 - visible in the properties dialogbox (usually bottom right) .

Right click on your textbox (even the cells in tables and matrixes contain textboxes) and choose Properties -> Advanced button -> Navigation Tab - 'Jump to URL:' textbox and press the 'fx' button on the right hand side. This takes you into the Expression Editor, here you enter the following in the 'Expression:' textbox on the right hand side.

="http://blogs.technet.com/mat_stephen/archive/" & reportitems!textbox1.value & ".aspx"

'Ok' all the dialogs back to your report - run the report and click on the textbox - heypresto!

SQL Server Reporting Services Report Packs - looking for suggestions

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 13:49:00 GMT

when I was over in the US recently, I attended a 'Bill Baker and team unplugged' session, (Bill is the GM for SQL Server Business Intelligence). Reporting Services Report packs came up as a topic for discussion. The team asked the audience if the Report Packs had been well recieved, to which I quickly responded 'yes', judging by the feedback I've had from my blog. So then we were asked to submit ideas for new Report Packs. If you have any suggestions for Report Packs you would like to see, submit them to me (via a comment would be good) and I will ensure they end up in front of the right person.

Letter from America 3 - Mischievous reports and feeding the 5000

Mat_Stephen — Thu, 04 Aug 2005 05:08:00 GMT

After all my messing around yesterday, I've decided to create this post in pocket word.

I attended a securty session yesterday and was reminded of an issue that can send DBAs scuttling from the room when they learn of it's presence, the 'trojan report'.

Reporting Services (RS) reports can use Windows security to access it's source database, that's to say it can use the securty credentials of the report user. This is what you'd expect we'd recommend since we so often bang on about the advantages of this securty model..

The trojan report is written by a ner do well, who includes some dodgy code in a report query, maybe via a stored procedure. The dodgy code might be malevolant or just pure naughty, but it won’t work using the insufficient security credentials of the report writer. However, the code will work when run by a CXO, or anyone with the necessary credentials, someone who runs the report to merely return a bunch of sales data. The good news, if you are a DBA with blood rapidly draining from your head, is there is a new EnableIntegratedSecurity system property that was introduced in SP1 and documented clearly in the readme for sp2. With this property you can disable any trojan report.

I'm always amazed when I come to events like Techready or TechEd, events that require feeding 5000+ attendees at meal times. These big feeding sessions are positively biblical in proportion. It takes a small army of people to: efficiently herd delegates passed the numerous long tables laden with food, to set the tables, to ferry the food in and out and to finally clear it all up. The whole thing is a logistical marvel.

When I learned that Jesus fed 5000 people, equiped with only a few loaves of bread and a bag of fish, I was taught that this was an extraordinary achievement. Well, as the son of God I think this was probably a bit of a no brainer - turning a small quantity of food into a vast feast. However, looking back on it now, what is truly amazing is how he managed to distribute all the food with only twelve deciples at his disposal.

My battery is running low so I better get on and submit this now, before I have another disaster like yesterday.

How Do You Deploy SQL Server Reporting Services?

Mat_Stephen — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:16:00 GMT

A colleague of mine in the States, Rob Caron, is very keen to learn how our customers are deploying Reporting Services; specifically with respect to IIS.

When we launched Reporting Services (RS) it was all too easy to say it was a ‘free’ addition to the SQL stack, indeed it was supposed to add value. However, many of our customers baulked at the idea of running IIS on the same box as their SQL Server data, this required another box for RS and consequently another license. RS no longer looked free (but it still looked cheaper than Crystal to many people).

Rob has a blog entry @ http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2005/07/13/438580.aspx, where he asks a couple of questions around customers’ RS deployment policy. I think many of our customers have baulked at the idea of having IIS on the same box as SQL Server and consequently haven’t managed to reap the very significant cost savings that were intended. Please visit Rob’s blog and spend two minutes to give us feedback – you could influence future pricing structures in your favour.

Reporting Services: Two New (Free) Report Packs Released for Sharepoint and Axapta

Mat_Stephen — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 23:35:00 GMT

Good news for the chap I met on the 'Ask the Experts' desk at TechEd, who was contemplating jumping through all sorts of hurdles to create reports form Sharepoint data. I couldn't really get my head round the (Sharepoint) problems he foresaw, but I was able to tell him that a report pack was in the pipeline to do just what he wanted, without any agro. So here it is, along with a report pack for Axapta (about which I know almost nothing).

Overview of the Report Pack for Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003

The Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is a set of 8 Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services reports that work with a sample database of information extracted from a SharePoint Portal Server environment. This database can be populated from your own SharePoint Portal Server environment using the downloadable Data Extraction Program (DEP). The DEP will read the SharePoint Portal Server data via the object model. You also can use the sample reports as templates for designing new reports.
This Report Pack includes the following reports: Storage Report, Storage Trend Report, Site Trend Report, Comprehensive Site Collections Report, Detailed Site Collection Report, Detailed Page Report, Best Bet Keyword, Search Terms.

You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=49159368-544B-4B09-8EED-4844B4E33D3D&displaylang=en

Overview of the Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for Microsoft Axapta 3.0. This is a set of 8 predefined report definition files that work with a sample database from Microsoft Axapta. You can use the sample reports as templates for designing new reports.

This Report Pack includes the following reports: CRM Recap, Customer Order Delivery Performance, Open Production Orders, Open Sales Orders, Purchase Order Planning, Rolling Invoice, Sub Report - Inventory On Hand, Sub Report - Open Purchase Order Detail.

You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=81592B13-7960-4EF3-9D3C-B10FD325390F&displaylang=en

The QFE for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 is now available.

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:22:00 GMT

The QFE for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services Service Pack 2 is now available.

The QFE is a generally distributed release that can be obtained from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=7FFE50D4-AFF8-4C1E-9609-6798190C2D58&displaylang=en.

This software patch includes fixes for the following issues:

HTML Viewer Style Sheet Configuration Property Missing from Service Pack 2

Incorrect line breaking or random formatting issues with MHTML

Leaving and returning to the Schedule Page from the Subscription Properties page causes dependent report parameters to be disabled, then reset to the first or default value

Tables exported to CSV may lose the first row of data

Detailed information, such as the issues resolved by this hotfix and the files affected, can be found in Microsoft Knowledge Base article 901383: Fix: Hotfix available for SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services SP2.

SQL Server Reporting Services: Custom colour in charts

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:40:00 GMT

A frequently asked question is, 'how does one customise the colours in a chart?' Below is a link to a blog post from Brian Welcker, which is actually a post on how to overcome the encumberence of the chart legend when it takes up too much space on a chart. The example takes advantage of some code stored directly in the report; you can see it by choosing Report - Report Properties and then the code tab. As a bonus you can see some cuning use of a .NET hash table to share colours consistently between a chart and a surrogate legend.

http://blogs.msdn.com/bwelcker/archive/2005/05/20/420349.aspx

Querying and Reporting on Report Execution Log Data

Mat_Stephen — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 18:28:00 GMT

Well I didn't realise, or maybe I just plain forgot, that these reports and the necessary support infrastrucuture come with Reporting Services under the extras folder on the CD - all useful stuff for report heads.

Longest Running Reports
Most Executed Reports
Report Exections By Hour
Report Parameters
ReportsByMonth
ReportsByUser
ReportsExecutedByDay
ReportSize
ReportSuccessRate
Todays Reports

For more info see http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/rsadmin/htm/arp_rslogfiles_v1_88gy.asp?frame=true

Reporting Services: How to stop IE striping out leading spaces in report data values

Mat_Stephen — Tue, 14 Jun 2005 11:21:00 GMT

Reporting Services: How to stop IE striping out leading spaces in report data values:

My thanks to Russell Christopher and Mike Schetterer who recently discussed the problem that IE will strip out leading spaces from data in a report. The solution: you have to replace the spaces with the ASCII code for non-breaking space, not the HTML expression for non-breaking space. IE wont interpret "&nbsp" as anything other than "&nbsp", this prevents malicious HTML injection.

So the answer is to use the expression : =Replace(Fields!Data.Value, " ", chr(160))

SQL 2005 Express to get Report Server and Workgroup edition to get Report Builder

Mat_Stephen — Fri, 10 Jun 2005 16:57:00 GMT

Good news! Due to popular demand we have added Report Server to the Express edition of SQL 2005 and added Report Builder to the Workgroup edition - there are some caviats though so check the small print at the bottom of this feature guide. http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/sql2005features.mspx