Report from Sharepoint List, including OR statements - reporting-services

Question

I am familiar with SQL but pulling it from a SharePoint list has proved really frustrating. The syntax is completely different and I find myself stumped on doing what should be a simple.
What I'm wanting to do is pull records when one of several date fields are greater than today's date or less than a date 60 days in the future. Also the value of a field called ActiveStatus should not be Deactive. Currently I have an applied filter on the dataset query designer that limits it to where ActiveStatus is not Deactive. Then on the dataset properties, under Filters, I'm specifying that DEAExpiration <= #start_date and DEAExpiration >#Today. This works fine if I want to pull just where that one field (DEAExpiration) is within those 2 dates.
But what I'm wanting is to pull where any of about 10 fields fall between those dates. In SQL I know it would be a simple string of OR statements, but I can't figure it out with this syntax. Any help would be greatly appreciated. A few of the fields I would want it to look at are DEAExpiration, ACLSRenewal, LicenseExpiration. If someone could help me get it set up to look at all 3 fields, I think I can modify it to include the rest of my fields.
Here is the current query:
<RSSharePointList xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<ListName>ProviderList</ListName>
<ViewFields>
<FieldRef Name="FirstName" />
<FieldRef Name="MiddleInitial" />
<FieldRef Name="LastName" />
<FieldRef Name="Title2" />
<FieldRef Name="Company" />
<FieldRef Name="Address1" />
<FieldRef Name="Address2" />
<FieldRef Name="City" />
<FieldRef Name="State" />
<FieldRef Name="Zip" />
<FieldRef Name="ActiveStatus" />
<FieldRef Name="DEA_x0023_" />
<FieldRef Name="DEAExpiration" />
</ViewFields>
<Query>
<Where>
<Neq>
<FieldRef Name="ActiveStatus" />
<Value Type="Text">Deactive</Value>
</Neq>
</Where>
</Query>
</RSSharePointList>

Answer 1

The bad news is that since you're not using C# code or Client Object Model and javascript you can't use LINQ to make more straightforward queries of Sharepoint data, I think you're stuck writing CAML queries. However there area couple of ways to make it easier to write CAML queries.
The go-to method is to downlaod and install Caml Query Builder from U2U: http://www.u2u.be/Software
There's also a codeplex project you can use to do the same:
http://spcamlqueryhelper.codeplex.com/
The way you would write this particular query is (I just did the Where clause):
<Where>
<And>
<Neq>
<FieldRef Name="ActiveStatus" />
<Value Type="Text">Deactive</Value>
</Neq>
<Or>
<Geq>
<FieldRef Name="Date1"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#Today</Value>
</Geq>
<Or>
<Lt>
<FieldRef Name="Date1"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#FutureDate</Value>
</Lt>
<Or>
<Geq>
<FieldRef Name="Date2"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#Today</Value>
</Geq>
<Or>
<Lt>
<FieldRef Name="Date2"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#FutureDate</Value>
</Lt>
<Or>
<Geq>
<FieldRef Name="Date3"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#Today</Value>
</Geq>
<Or>
<Lt>
<FieldRef Name="Date3"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#FutureDate</Value>
</Lt>
<Or>
<Geq>
<FieldRef Name="FinalDate"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#Today</Value>
</Geq>
<Lt>
<FieldRef Name="FinalDate"/>
<Value Type="DateTime">#FutureDate</Value>
<Lt>
</Or>
</Or>
</Or>
</Or>
</Or>
</Or>
</Or>
</And>
</Where>
I only did 4 date columns to show how the nesting structure works. On the final date you're nesting (FinalDate) you put the Lt and Geq clauses next to each other to terminate the nesting. To complete your query you just need to do 6 additional levels of nesting.
This is the kind of job where Caml Query Builder is a god send because it eliminates the time wasted trying to nest everything properly and the possibility of query breaking typos.