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Category: Reporting Services

SSRS Express And Azure Limitations

Published 2016-09-27 by Kevin Feasel

William Assaf points out that SQL Server Reporting Services Express Edition cannot connect to Azure SQL Database:

Express editions of SQL Server Reporting Service, from SQL 2016 on down, cannot connect to Azure SQL Databases. Turns out, getting something for free does have some significant limitations.

For example, you’ll see an error message “The Report Server has encountered a configuration error” on a data source page, when creating a new SSRS data source in the Report Manager website. What you may have not noticed on this page was the possible values in the Data Source Type drop down list.

This is an important limitation if you were thinking of living on the free tier of SSRS.

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SSRS Mobile Reports And Data Types

Published 2016-09-15 by Kevin Feasel

Koen Verbeek runs into a problem with SSRS Mobile Reports:

The error message “The JSON SharedDataSet Table renderer cannot parse the supplied report” doesn’t exactly tell you what’s going on. Apparently it is having issues with the Location column, which is of the geography data type. If you remove it, the dataset will be imported in the mobile report editor. There’s no documentation of which data types are supported or not in the mobile reports. I included the column in the first place to find out if the Mobile Report Publisher could handle it and plot the data on a map. It seems not.

Example number 798 in the “Microsoft errors tend to tell you what caused the failure, but not what actually caused the failure” ongoing series.  Sure, the JSON SharedDataSet Table renderer blew up…but what does that have to do with me and how do I fix it?  I realize that good error messages can be difficult in complex software, but this one isn’t very helpful at all.

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VMware Configuration Reports

Published 2016-08-22 by Kevin Feasel

Allen McGuire has a few Reporting Services reports that he created against vCenter Database:

So you are a DBA and you are in a virtual environment – VMware in particular.  You are curious to know the health of the VMware hosts in terms of CPU and RAM, but you really don’t know how to get the data you need and you’re not certain if the information you are asking for is entirely accurate.  Well, chances are you have access to the VMware databases themselves – if that is the case, you can create these reports based on a blog post from Jonathan Kehayias: “Querying the VMware vCenter Database (VCDB) for Performance and Configuration Information“.

I have created five reports that are based on Jonathan’s queries and you can download the RDL for the SSRS reports below – enjoy!

Click through for the reports.

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Reporting Services Cmdlets

Published 2016-08-01 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Turley discusses work within the community to get Reporting Services cmdlets:

We (along with Aaron Nelson, Data Platform MVP & Chrissy LeMaire, PowerShell MVP) are working with the SQL Server product teams to recommend the first set of CmdLets that we would like to see added to the PowerShell libraries.  Please help us by posting comments with your suggestions.  What are the most important SSRS-related tasks that you would like to automate using PS?  Give us your top five or so.

I’m glad to see Reporting Services get some Powershell love.

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Moving SSRS Reports

Published 2016-06-30 by Kevin Feasel

Andy Mallon fills a need in the community:

We’re just interacting with the SSRS Web Service. I’m using PowerShell, but you could also write a little .NET app to do something similar.

I’m not using any magical SSRS-specific cmdlets. I’m using PowerShell to interact with a web service….that web service just happens to be SSRS.

If you’re still trying to get along with RSScripter (if you can even find a copy any longer), Andy’s code might help you out.

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Row-Level Security With Reporting Services

Published 2016-06-14 by Kevin Feasel

Paul Turley discusses combining row-level security, SQL Server Reporting Services, and SQL Server Analysis Services:

In every data source connection string, you can add a simple expression that maps the current Windows username to the CUSTOMDATA property of the data source provider.  This works in SSRS embedded data sources, shared data sources, in a SharePoint Office Data Connecter (ODC) file and in a SharePoint BISM connection file.  In each case, the syntax should be the similar.  Here is my shared data source on the SSRS 2016 report server

This is pretty snazzy.  Paul goes into good detail on the topic, so read the whole thing.

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Changing The SSRS Display Language

Published 2016-06-09 by Kevin Feasel

Regis Baccaro shows how to change the user language in SSRS 2016:

Changing it to Spanish and refreshing the browser changed the SSRS user language to Spanish without me having to add a language at all.

To change the user language of SSRS 2016 you need only to change the Formatting Region setting from the control panel – nothing else !

The issue I tend to have with this is that different tools tend to behave differently when you start changing the format settings.  I recall Excel being particularly finicky about it.

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Reporting Services Accessibility

Published 2016-05-18 by Kevin Feasel

Andrew Notarian notes that Reporting Services reports still aren’t Section 508 compliant, even in 2016:

Last weekend I spent some time creating very basic tabular reports in SSRS 2016 to see how they handle accessibility, WCAG and Section 508 issues. It looks like things are largely unchanged since the first SQL 2008 Service Pack which introduced the AccessibleTablix property to the various render options (See this prior post). Now you will want to add the AccessibleTablix item to your HTML4, HTML5 and MHTML renderers. You will get tags linking the detail cells to the header but you will still be lacking a few of the items needed to pass a WCAG audit with flying colors (e.g. TH tags in the header row).

That’s a shame.

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SSRS Improvements

Published 2016-04-07 by Kevin Feasel

Simon Sabin has thoughts on Reporting Services 2016:

I recently installed SQL Server 2016 on my surface to get all our SQLBits reports sorted. What I couldn’t figure out was why it was so quick. I thought it might be because it was a local install and running on an SSD based surface but that couldn’t account for the blazing difference with previous versions.

Well the answer is much better.

I am looking forward to Reporting Services 2016, even though I rarely use SSRS anymore.

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SSRS 2016 Modes

Published 2016-03-30 by Kevin Feasel

John White shows that the Sharepoint Integrated vs Native mode has shifted in SQL Server 2016:

This situation remained exactly the same in SQL Server 2014, but has changed dramatically with SQL Server 2016. SSRS in SQL Server 2016 contains significant advancements, chief among them are a new HTML5 rendering engine, a new report portal, mobile reports, and (soon) Power BI Desktop rendering. This is fantastic news, but it also changes the game significantly with respect to the Integrated/Native mode decision. With SSRS 2016, most of the new investments are in Native mode only – the balance has shifted. The table below shows an (incomplete) list of new features, and their supported modes.

You still need Integrated mode to read Power View reports, and John mentions a few places where Native mode falls short, so take the time to plan out which is right for you.

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