Having issues with the SSRS Reports site - reporting-services

So I'm working with SSRS (SQL Server 2005), which some of our applications use to generate downloads. The problem with it, though, is that the Reports website that is used to manage it seems to crash randomly. I haven't yet figured out a rhyme or reason to it - only that it will suddenly bust out with a 'Specified cast is not valid' exception and any further attempts to do anything will fail with
The item '/' cannot be found (RsItemNotFound)
Is there a place I can start looking to help me debug this issue? Are there logs that might have more in-depth information than the useless error messages I'm getting?

Is there anything in the standard event logs? You'll probably find lots of logs to go through in (C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\LogFiles)...that's the default path at least.

we have a web app at where i work that occasinally, after it's been left alone for a while, has to "recompile" and will take a few seconds before it'll show a page. i've noticed that ssrs does this at times, and it might or might not be causing your problem.
you could test this by setting up an instance of ssrs on your local machine (that you know no one will get on) and running your downloads against that.
also, check and make sure no one is turning anything off or doing any backups when you are doing the downloads.

Related

How can I can deploy just one SSRS report at a time?

I just installed the latest version of SQL Server Design Tools for Visual Studio 2017 (in order to get SSIS templates etc.)
Prior to this I could right-click a report in Solution Explorer and choose run, and this would deploy and run just that one report, but not the others in the project.
Now it seems that when I do the same, all reports (and data sources) in the project are being re-deployed every time I try this. It's not a huge problem, but I liked the old way, in case somebody knows of a little setting tweak in there - I've not found it yet in search.
We had a similar problem when we recently upgraded our setup.
The first thing to note is that Run isn't typically used as a deployment model. It's supposed to be something used for testing, so the behavior you're seeing is likely related (in part) to that. To actually deploy a report, you should be using Deploy, which is right above the Run option.
Additionally, we often saw this behavior when VS could not completely build the entire solution. If you have any reports in your solution that don't build, or are missing (as in they're in the solution but not on disk), the overall build "failed".
That means that VS will continue to try and rebuild the whole project each time you build, run, or deploy anything. If you remove everything from your solution that doesn't pass, and then do this once, you should notice that behavior goes away.
Thankfully this bug was fixed in Reporting Services Projects 1.18.

MS Access 2010/2013 Transition Issues

So currently my boss and I are the two employees that work on our company's access database. I just got Office 2013 on my computer and he is will working with 2010. We have ran into some inexplicable bugs with the database.
Most of these can be fixed by just copying an old version of a form or report into the database when it fails; however, it is quite disconcerting when we spend hours trying to discover why something is wrong and are able to fix it without explaining why.
Most of the issues so far have occurred when I am using the db in Access 2013. So far the issues have been:
Access occasionally crashes and restarts when I am working in the VB code
Some forms bug out for no reason. It yet again occurs when I am working in the VB code if there is a compile erro. To further explain the "bugging out", the form usually contains about 2000 separate forms that you can search through, but when it bugs out it will only show one blank form. At first I panicked thinking all the table's data was gone, but nothing changed the table
There have been other hiccups, but nothing noteworthy besides these two
I guess my question is if anyone else has had issues along these lines, or if they knew of any other known issues. I tried to research errors people have been having, but I couldn't find anything besides Microsoft's official release of what features were being deleted.
As always, thanks in advance!
Your system should be split into two files. FE(front end) containing all forms, queries, code, etc., linked to the BE. BE(back end) containing the data tables only.
Maintain a development copy of the FE that is only used for making modifications.
Each user should have their own copy of the FE on their local machine. If you don't know how to split, just search for it as there are plenty of instructions out there.
I have 2010, but I worked with a consultant who worked on the same project in 2013. I too, saw some behavior that looked like version related bugs, but nothing definite.
Responding to your list:
Access occasionally crashes and restarts when I am working in the VB code -- This has happened to me in every version of Access I have used, from 97 to 2010.
Some forms bug out for no reason. It yet again occurs when I am working in the VB code if there is a compile error... -- If the compile error is severe enough to lose project state, this is not surprising.
Recommendations:
Decompile your application front-end occasionally, especially when 'weird' errors show up. See this SO link: automating decompile / recompile in ms-access
Compact & Repair at least daily while developing your application
Backup! Do this at least for every significant revision. Sometimes, the Access front-end will become so corrupt that it trashes all of your work. When this happens, nothing is recoverable.

Crystal Reports Server - get list of currently running reports and their progress

Hope it's the right place to ask this question - usually I use SO to ask about programming...
I'm doing a project that involves Crystal Reports Server. From code, I'm able to schedule reports successfully, but when I look at the BI launch pad I don't see the report in My Recently Run Documents (I see failed reports in that list - ones that has wrong database credentials).
When I go to Central Management Console and I find my reports in folders and I go to Properties > History I see the report status as "Running" - and it has been like that for a long while (too long than it should) for 2 different reports I have sent.
How can I diagnose what the problem is? and why it is stuck? there are no error messages anywhere about it.
How can I get a full history of all reports in the system (not just one single report at a time)? and how can I see currently running reports?
How can I stop a running report?
I really hope this is the right place for these kind of questions... if not, would be very happy to get a referral.
Thanks
How can I get a full history of all reports in the system?
Open the CMC and then click on the Instance Manager. At the bottom of the page, you can filter on the object type and status. That way, you can get a full overview of all running reports on your platform.
How can I stop a running report?
If you select a running instance (either in a document's history page or in the Instance Manager), you'll notice that there is no stop button. Instead, you have to delete the running instance. It might not stop running immediately though (depending on what it's doing), but it will be removed immediately from the list of instances.
How can I diagnose what the problem is?
What I would recommend is to enable tracing on all related servers (thus your job server, processing server, etc) and then retry scheduling the report. This should generate additional logging on the server which you can use to diagnose the issue.
The trace files have the extension .glf (generic log file) and are located in the logging folder on your Crystal Server. Have a look at the command-line property of each of the servers for which you're enabling the tracing, you should find a log folder there somewhere.
Make sure to turn the tracing off again as soon as you're finished, as tracing will not only create extra strain on your servers (causing the system to slow down), but it will also result in very large log files.
Before starting with tracing, have a look at the existing log files to see if it doesn't already contain error messages that might help you diagnose the issue. Sort the log files by date, and look at the most recent one for each of the servers involved. If there's nothing in there, start with tracing, but remove the existing .glf files to minimise log contamination (some files will be locked, just ignore them).

SSDT/SSRS - Report Previewer Won't Run

I'm having a very peculiar issue with SQL Server Data Tools 2012. Whenever I attempt to launch the report previewer, I get the following exception:
There was no endpoint listening at net.pipe://localhost/PreviewProcessingServce7324/ReportProcessing that could accept the message. This is often caused by an incorrect address or SOAP action. See InnerException, if present, for more deatils.
As far as I can tell, nothing I did triggered the issue. It just started happening one day when I fired up SSDT. I tried the suggestion on
Report Designer Preview in SSDT throws up a 'end point' not found error.
However, my service is up and running just fine (restarting it didn't help), and using Setspn didn't do anything for it, either.
Anyone have any ideas?
That is a current bug in SSDT-BI. The current workaround for now is to right click on the report you want to preview in your Solution Explorer and click RUN.
You will also notice that if you try to preview the report for the first time a command prompt window opens up that runs the preview process, If you don't close this window and just minimize it then you can preview the report but I think the RUN method is much easier for now. Please mark as answer if this helped.
This can happen when you have some SQL Services installed and running on your machine that interfere with the Report Preview. You can check your current services by going opening Sql Server Configuration Manager:
To fix this you can do the following:
Type WinKey + R, input services.msc in the Run box, and press Enter.
Find the "Net.Pipe Listener Adapter" and either Restart or Disable it.
The workaround, as SQLnbe mentioned, is to:
Right Click the RDLC file from solution explorer
Click "Run" from there which will open up a new window.
The Preview issue was resolved for me when I deleted the .DATA files associated with the solution.
In my case I tried all the above solutions, and:
"Run" from context menu does not really work for me, as it's much, much longer than preview in VS2017, as rendering was a deciding factor in my work (lots of grouping by column etc). and render is much faster in VS compared to SSRS,
Could not find listed .Net services on my laptop,
Deleting DATA files did not fixed the issue either,
VS restart and reloading the solution.
I'm not sure if it was points 3 and 4 together that actually did the trick, but I'm putting it out there - just in case it actually is the procedure that will work for others, which is to try option 4.
I need to also note that this issue started after there was a momentary connection dropout. I need to work with WIFI instead LAN due to necessity to be roam-able, and every time I undock the laptop all my connections in SSMS are lost (and with them all the temp tables etc).
I faced the same issue and solved it.
Steps:
Right click on the report.
Click view code.
Check the parameters names in both query parameters and report parameters and make sure it's written correctly.
Close the report and open it again
Thanks
This is what I did:
Restart the .Net.Pipe service in the service console. This didn't resolve the issues.
Closed Visual Studio completely and relaunch the Visual Studio 2017 (in my case).
It seem that the preview is back. It could be the combination of (1) and (2).
None of the solution above worked for me. What did I found and it worked is to run Visual Studio as administrator.
Just closing the visual Studio by ending task with task manager and re-opening the solution worked for me to get through the error.

Getting random error: "The expression On Change you entered..."

Running Access 2010 on Citrix against a SQL Server 2008R2 backend. Occasionally my users will get an error reading:
The expression On Change you entered as the event property setting produced the following error: Overflow.
* The expression may not result in the name of a macro, the name of a user-defined function, or [Event Procedure].
* There may have been an error evaluating the function, event, or macro.
Once a user gets this error during a session, he will continue to get it until he logs out of the database front end. He can then immediately relaunch the Access front end and go do whatever it was he was attempting to do. The On Change portion will vary in event type (sometimes On Click, sometimes After Update, etc), and it will happen on different forms, but the fix is always to exit the DB then get back in and everything just works fine.
The more I learn, the more I'm starting to believe that it's got something to do with the Citrix enviornment that we're in, but I haven't been able to pin anything down.
I've seen the suggestions to copy the form, and to start with a new DB and import everything. I've done these and it hasn't really helped - i.e. this is random enough that I don't know if the frequency of issues decreased significantly after the change.
Does anyone have any additional suggestions of what I can do in my Access code?
Does anyone have any experience with this setup and have some Citrix or SQL Server tweaks that I might be able to pass along? (I don't know if our IT people will listen or try to work with me on it, but it's worth a shot.)
I'm frustrated with the randomness of this, and I hate telling my users there's nothing I can do about it, but at the moment, I'm completely stumped.
Thanks,
FreeMan
Edit - Additional details...
the users are running a compiled .accde
they are all running from a common .accde file
this is still happening for a few users to whom I have given their own personal copy to run
The goto fix for random weird stuff happening in Citrix is to disable hooking. Hooks get injected into every process running in a Citrix session, so they could be screwing up something in Access. You can configure registry entries to exclude Access from being hooked:
http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX107825