Category: Reporting Services

Microsoft quietly announced SQL Server 2016 RC1 is available:

In SQL Server 2016 RC 1, we made enhancements to SQL Server Reporting Services, including:

• Updated preview of the new web portal: The new web portal by default, and the classic Report Manager now removed.  Additionally, open the Mobile Report Publisher and Report Builder from the new web portal using any modern browser.

• Custom branding: Customize the web portal with your organization’s logo and colors.

• KPIs and mobile reports: Click a KPI and see a view with more details, and connect KPIs and mobile reports to parameterized datasets.

• Modern paginated reports: Design beautifully modern paginated reports with new, modern styles for charts, gauges, maps and other data visualizations.

It looks like Reporting Services is getting to release shape.

James Anderson shows off mobile-friendly reports in SSRS 2016:

To install Mobile Report Publisher, click the down arrow in the SSRS portal and select the Mobile Report Publisher. Download the installer and click through to the end. Install the C++ redistributable. If you have used DataZen then the designer will look very familiar.

It’s nice seeing Reporting Services all grown up.

Jeffrey Verheul has a post showing how to automate Reporting Services report generation in .NET:

But SSRS can also have text-fields as input for your report. These can also be added to the URL. Just like the parameters above, you just add the parameter name and value to the URL: “http:// [servername] :80/ReportServer/Pages/ReportViewer.aspx?%2fTest%2fTestReport&From=2015-12-01&To=2015-12-08&FreeText=This is a test…&rs:Command=Render”.

After some testing I’ve found out that you can use any character in the text parameter you want to, except for the &-sign. If you use that, SSRS will think it’s a parameter or command and won’t accept the URL. And there’s also the (browser) limitation of the URL length. Testing proves that the limit is 7926-7931 characters. If your URL is below 7926 characters, it works like a charm. If you go above that (between 7926 and 7931) the behavior of SSRS gets buggy, and above 7931 characters SSRS will throw an exception.

The trick here is that SSRS has a nice web service, so once you’re familiar with it, generating reports is easy.

James Anderson shows off paginated report improvements in SSRS 2016:

Anyone who has used SSRS in the past has probably been slightly frustrated with the lack of control for parameter positioning. It was possible to have some control by manipulating the ordering of the parameters, but for 2016 we have a new interface to define the positioning. It’s basically a grid onto which parameters, along with their labels, can be placed.

The big one for me:  HTML 5 support.  I remember spending so many hours trying to figure out why reports wouldn’t display in Firefox correctly or why they sometimes wouldn’t work at all (because the report builder executable wasn’t installed correctly or that one time there was a bug in the executable)…and that was before mobile took off as a serious platform.

James Anderson has a quick runthrough of installing SSRS 2016:

This first post of 3 takes a quick peek at SSRS 2016 using the Community Technical Preview (CTP) 3.2. I will be making a quick post installation tweak and then guiding you through the steps to build your first report. If you are experienced with SSRS you can probably just scan this post to see the differences in 2016. See the past post Installing SQL Server 2016 for details on the install I did prior to working on this post.

Installation and configuration don’t look radically different from the last couple versions, but it’s good to get a refresher on the topic.

Jan Mulkens noticed that Datazen is now fully integrated into SQL Server Reporting Services 2016 as of CTP 3.2:

Do you see what Microsoft did?
Perfect integration of Datazen into Reporting Services!
We even notice the differentiation being made between KPI’s, mobile reports and paginated reports.

Sounds like a good reason to grab 3.2.

Kevin Eckart alerts us to a display bug in SQL Server Reporting Services 2014:

In SSRS 2014 there is a bug in rendering pages in Internet Explorer where the Save, Refresh, and Print buttons will all show on different lines in IE.

Keep those instances patched, folks.

Koen Verbeeck talks about the Reporting Services overhaul:

And these are all awesome changes. But sometimes it’s the little things that make me smile.
For example, I was toying with SSRS 2016 CTP3.0 and I wanted to insert a new chart. Suddenly I noticed they had updated the little chart icons in the dialog:

Here’s hoping the final product ends up being what we all wanted back in 2008; if so, that’d be pretty awesome.

Meagan Longoria is thinking about the future of Datazen now that Microsoft has acquired them:

This new report manager means the current administration of Datazen (hubs and dashboard groups, etc.) will likely change to conform to more of the SSRS or Power BI paradigms.  As far as I know, there aren’t yet solid details on exactly how this will work. In the Microsoft-led sessions at PASS Summit, they also mentioned that there will be migration tools for those already using Datazen that want to take advantage of this new platform.

So if you are considering Datazen but were worried about its future, there is no need to worry. If you are implementing Datazen now, you can feel better about enhancement and upgrade opportunities with the promised migration tool.

Click through for a hypnotizing animated GIF.  Seriously, I needed to close the window after a couple of minutes because I kept watching it over and over and over.