Category: Reporting Services

Hannah Vernon does a search:

Microsoft’s SQL Server Reporting Services, colloquially known as SSRS, provides a great way to expose data from SQL Server in human-consumable form, typically via a web site. Generally, it’s a good idea to use a stored procedure as the source of data for SSRS Reports. In a large SSRS environment, it can be challenging to determine which reports use a specific stored procedure.

This code provides details about SSRS Reports where the definition of the report includes any specific keyword, such as the name of a stored procedure.

Click through for a query against ReportServer.

Ed Pollack opens the lid:

SQL Server Reporting Services is a convenient application for generating reports quickly and efficiently. Its back-end components are a bit more confusing to an unsuspecting administrator.

This article delves into the ReportServer database, revealing the tables and data that are used to power SSRS. In addition, the ability to alter data in these tables is presented as a way to avoid time-consuming migration or data modification processes.

Do be sure to check out Ed’s warning and then dive into the database.

Tim Mitchell breaks out the black print on white cardboard:

When a simple presentation of data is needed, SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a common tool of choice. Creating simple tabular, row-and-column type reports can be done relatively quickly and easily in SSRS. But what happens if you need a lot of these reports? If you need to present dozens or even hundreds of reports to end users, building even a simple report for each one can take time. Unfortunately there’s no Biml-like automation tool for SSRS, so this work must typically be done by hand.

However, it is possible to create a generic report in SSRS that can dynamically present information from tables or views. In this post, I’ll share my implementation of this.

Looking at Tim’s solution, I’d be a bit concerned about longer-term maintenance. In particular, my worry would be that what you gain in ease of development, you give away in making troubleshooting and report maintenance harder.