I am developing a Reporting Services solution for a DOD website. Frequently I'll have a report and want to have as a parameter the Service (in addition to other similar mundane, but repetitive parameters like Fiscal Year, Data Effective Date, etc). Basically everything I've seen of SSRS 2005 says it can't be done... but I personally refuse to believe that MS would be so stupid/naive/short-sited to leave something like sharing datasets out of reporting entirely.
Is there a clunky (or not so clunky way) to share datasets and still keep the reporting server happy? Will SSRS2008 do this?
EDIT:
I guess I worded that unclearly. I have a stack of reports. Since I'm in a DoD environment, one common parameter for these reports is Service (army, navy, etc. for those non US users). Since "Business rules" cause me to not be able to use stored procedures; is there a way I can make 1 dataset and link to it from the various reports? Will Reporting 2008 support something like this? I'm getting sick of re-typing the same query in a bunch of reports.
I am not clear if you need to share a dataset, since you have some SQL results that you need to use twice, and don't want to re-compute the same data twice, or you want to do something regarding parameters. So with this "I didn't really understand the question" preface...
You cannot share a dataset. Meaning, you can't, lets say, have a dataset returning table A, and in dataset B try to join with A.
If this is really what you want to do, you could use temporary tables to store A and then in dataset B use the temporary table. There are best practices around that, but since I am not sure this is what you need, I won't spend time talking about that right now.
If you cannot use Stored Procedures, I hope you can use a view.
Else you could leave SQL Server and use CSV sheets as data storage.
Related
I'm trying to figure out how (if it is even possible) to allow a user to add a 'flag' to say when they have actioned a row in an SSRS report. This would need to carry back into the underlying tables.
Any help is appreciated; whether it is telling me this is impossible or giving me an idea of where to start.
No, this is not possible in Reporting Services. You will need to look into building your own solution in .NET
I've run into a problem that, although I feel in my gut there is a 'simple' resolution, I'm not getting anywhere with it! The reports I'm running are using a dataset that includes a username that I need to use to 1) Use as a parameter for running the report and 2) Use to create an email address and send it to the user. I really don't know enough yet about SSRS, or have the experience, to have already created the parameterized report (nevermind the iterating through the dataset that I'm assuming will be needed), nor have I ever set up a data-driven subscription. ANY help on either of these issues would earn eternal gratitude.
Thank you all....again!
Patrick
Its not too bad once you've been through it once. First you need to get the SQL out of your parameter dataset (it's redundant in the report definition). Then in Report Manager/SharePoint you can define the Data Driven Subscription. Paste in the SQL from your parameter dataset into the wizard as the Query, and then use the columns from that SELECT on the later pages of the wizard as required e.g. email address for ... email address.
No coding is required (beyond the parameter dataset which you already have) and the wizard is fairly self-explanatory and well documented.
Good luck!
Mike
I have two SQL Server databases with identical schemas, but different data. I also have SSRS generating reports, in native mode, for one of the databases. All reports the same shared data source.
I would like to allow users to get reports for the other database. I created a second shared data source for the second database. Modifying the reports to use this second data source results in reports as expected.
Because the RDLs are the same, except for the data source, and because I don't want to maintain what are basically duplicate reports, I'm looking for a way to dynamically switch data sources, depending on user input.
Is there an easy means of accomplishing this? An existing solution would be best. Barring that, can the RDL's data source be parametrized? Or, can the RDS's connection string be parametrized?
You can use parameters or other expressions in the connection string.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156450%28SQL.90%29.aspx (2005)
or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156450.aspx (2008)
I'm going to piggy back on the last answer. Yes, use parameters in the connection string, but populate the data to ensure your users aren't seeing database names, etc. that you might not want them to see for security. You can store the values in a table, pass both the human readable and SQL Server specific values.
Does that make sense?
I would like to use SQL Reporting Services 2008 to generate my reports, but I want to use my own UI for specifying the report type, columns, parameters and everything. I want to be able to take these criteria, and then kick off an asynchronous request to SSRS and have the report emailed to me. Is this possible? I don't want to go all the way down the road of researching SQL Reporting Services 2008 only to find that it doesn't do what I need it to do. Also, I will have a ton of DB partitions that the data will need to be pulled from. Some reports will need to pull data from only one of these, but other ones may actually need to span different databases. Is it possible when sending a report request to SSRS to specify what servername/database to pull the data from? Is it possible to tell it to take the data from multiple databases and combine it? Thanks.
Like Crystal Reports, ActiveReports and other report generators, SSRS has two basic elements behind each report: the SQL query and the report layout. No matter what tool you use for the SQL -- it can be inline SQL in the report or a call to a stored procedure -- it's going to be the same query. Multiple databases are fine as long as you can specify them up front.
You can have parameterized queries, so the user is prompted to input the relevant filters (customer ID, product group, date range, whatever).
Doing the report layout is similar to other tools -- you drag and drop controls like labels onto the report, and set their formatting.
SSRS does provide a lot of options for distributing the report, including email. You can embed the report in an ASP.Net web page, leave it on the report server site for users to browse to, run it in the wee hours of the morning and cache it so every user doesn't have to wait for the lengthy query to run.
It's a great tool. I think it will be worth your effort to experiment with it. I would wait on creating the customized UI until you've exhausted the possibilities inherent in the tool.
SSRS is not designed with this scenario in mind, for that matter I am not sure that any out of the box reporting solution is going to have an elegant solution for this. While SSRS can do what you are asking (as well as others), it is by no means quick or easy. You seem to be looking for an advanced ad-hoc solution with dynamic sourcing of the data. I would first question the requirements and determine if the business scenario really justifies such an implementation. I would weigh custom building a solution vs your learning curve with a BI reporting solution. You may find that it is easier to just build something on your own.
I think the heterogeneous dynamic database mashup is probably going to be the most challenging part.
Depending on what your scalability requirements are, one place that has that part covered, and a report writer, is Access. (Duck! Incoming!)
I think you may be creating a rod for your own back to a certain extent as RS ships with a few interfaces for report creation.
Mind you the end product is an rdl file which is nothing but xml, so you can write them by hand if you really like.
Multiple data sources are supported, but combining them on a single control/chart/etc are not, so you'll need to configure yourself a cross database capability from one of your data-sources prior to the report request if you want to do that.
What's the best way to combine results sets from disparate data sources in SSRS?
In my particular example, I need to write a report that pulls data from SQL Server and combines it with another set of data that comes from a DB2 database. In the end, I need to join these separate data sets together so I have one combined dataset with data from both sources combined on to the same rows. (Like an inner join if both tables were coming from the same SQL DB). I know that you can't do this "out of the box" in SSRS 2005. I'm not excited about having to pull the data into a temporary table on my SQL box because users need to be able to run this report on demand and it seems like having to use SSIS to get the data into the table on demand will be slow and hard to manage with multiple users trying to get at the report simultaneously. Are there any other, more elegant solutions out there?
I know that the linked server solution mentioned below would technically work, however, for some reason our DBAs will simply not allow us to use linked servers.
I know that you can add two different data sets to a report, however, I need to be able to join them together. Anybody have any ideas on how to best accomplish this?
We had to do something similar (i.e. inner join 2 data sources from different servers). I believe the best way is to write your own custom Data Extension. It's not very difficult and it would give you the ability to do this and more.
You could add the DB2 database as a linked server in sql server and just join the two tables in a view/sproc in sql. I've done it, it's not hard and you'll get data in realtime.
You could create a linked server that would access the database directly or if you didn't want to strain the database during business hours, you could create a job to copy the data you need overnight.
SSRS 2005 allows you to have multiple datasets for a report. Each dataset can refer to a different datasource, one can come from a SQL DB another can be a ODBC source etc.
In the report designer view in Visual Studio go to the "Data" tab and add new data sources pointing to your different databases. Once you are done, when designing the report for each element you have to explicitly specify which dataset the data is coming from.
If the above does not work, you can write managed code, refer to http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/msdntv/cc540036.aspx for more helpful information and videos.
You could attach both the MSSQL tables and the DB2 tables to a Jet database and bind your report to the Jet database. I don't know the implications of the single threaded nature of Jet, or how much work would be delegated to the backing stores.