Russell Christopher's Semi-Useful BI Musings

Too bad. Many people have HTML and/or RTF stored in a database, a dataset, or wherever. If you display this text in a Reporting Services textbox, it gets rendered as markup versus properly formatted HTML or RTF. Currently, Reporting Services...

Don't know how I missed this..this DL has been available for a week now! http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BE6A2C5D-00DF-4220-B133-29C1E0B6585F&displaylang=en

You've installed SSRS 2005, and you're sure that you chose to include the sample files...yet you don't see them on your file system...Where are they? There's one more step you need to take care of...browse to C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90...

I've seen tons of questions around if you can use various components of SRS 2000 with SSRS 2005 (and vice-versa), so I'm attempting to document them all in once place. This will hopefully become a good FAQ on the subject...feel free to ask/add more to...

In SSRS 2000, there was a specific location on the filesystem where you could drop RDL documents so that they'd show up as possbile new report choices when a developer chose to create new report. The same holds true for SSRS 2005: C:\Program Files...

I saw a question last week asking if one could use the new 2.0 SQLMembershipProvider to build a Forms Auth solution with SSRS, so I created a prototype to find out. Long story short, you can. Here's a walkthrough which will leave you with the following...

I've had a fair number of questions from my customers around the use of Forms Authentication in conjunction with Report Builder. The basic thing people want to know is "does it work?". As a matter of fact, it does. It functions the same way as with...

2005 Books Online and/or microsoft.com readers know that you can use SQL Express and SSRS together (with a few caveats – hit http://www.microsoft.com/sql/technologies/reporting/rsfeatures.mspx to view them). However, you're going to have to wait...

This is the site of one of the ReportViewer PMs...lots and lots of juicy samples. http://www.gotreportviewer.com/

In 2005, there is limited report browsing support for non IE 6 SP1 browsers (IE 6 SP1 with scripting enabled, that is) This info will be fully documented at some point in the future, but in the meantime here are some general nuggets (BTW, none of this...

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e719ecf7-9f46-4312-af89-6ad8702e4e6e&DisplayLang=en

I covered how to do impersonation with the Winform ReportViewer control a few weeks ago, so here's how to do it with the WebForm version. The first thing to keep in mind is that by default the WebForm ReportViewer will run under the security context...

This one is flying under the radar -- Thought I'd publicize it a bit: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=D09C1D60-A13C-4479-9B91-9E8B9D835CDC&displaylang=en [Scroll to the very bottom] "The Reporting Add-In for...

I have a customer who needs to use Basic Auth with SQL Reporting Services 2005, so I wanted to make sure they could get at Report Builder too. WARNING: Don't EVER do this unless you are using SSL with Reporting Services! If you turn Basic Authentication...

The Winform Report Viewer control is pretty nifty, but occasionally you'll want to access a remote report server using a different identity than the user logged in at the console. It can be done, but takes a tiny bit of work. You're going to be calling...

I've been playing around with using different forms of authentication / impersonation with the Report Viewer controls, and I thought I'd post the fruits of my efforts. Here we go: Using Forms Authentication with the Winform Report Viewer control is...

At times, you may need to launch Report Builder from your custom application as either the currently logged in user, or under a different, arbitrary identity. Here's how! Regardless of the technique you use, you're basically going to be hitting...

New in CTP16 / SQL Server 2005 Community Tech Preview (September) -- If you've spent a lot of time building the perfect model for use by Report Builder, you may want to use it as a data source for any reports you build with VS Report Designer, too. ...

While playing around with the report viewer controls and localization, I bumped into a few things I think are worth passing along. In the "I should have known this in the first place" department, you must take steps to make sure the report viewer runs...

Want the next version of SQL 2005? Drive over here: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/ctp.mspx

Alec Harley reported an interesting (read: annoying) behavior around the use of Dateparts inside date-related functions used by Report Builder In older builds, it appears you may not use the nice abbreviated Dateparts that we're used to (for example...

It’s not uncommon for someone to want to integrate their pre-existing ASP.net app (which utilizes Forms Authentication) with Reporting Services. When doing so, we don’t want to force users to logon twice, however – The goal is to have the Forms auth cookie...

While playing around with newer builds of Yukon, I noticed two changes from IDW15/CTP15 when it comes to building models: (Thanks to Carolyn Chau!) Up until IDW15/CTP15, you used the IdentifyingAttributes property of an entity to specify which fields...

I just spent an entertaining hour trying to get a 2005 Reporting Services web farm operational. It's up now, but I'm a tired, broken man. Here are the mistakes I made: On certain 2005 SKUs, the Remote Connection property for your database engine...

[Thanks to Robert Bruckner, Daniel Reib, Tudor Trufinescu and Mike Schetterer!] Using rsConfig.exe and rsActivate.exe, you can easily set up a reporting farm in which multiple instances of the Report Server web and windows service use the same ReportServer...