Musings on Reporting Services and Notification Services

Wow.  We just RTM’ed SQL Server 2008 R2.  Check out the official web site SQL Server 2008 R2 Website . Now that the official release is on its way out the door, I thought I’d share some reports that show off some of the new capabilities. ...

Problem: You may have learned about sparklines or you want to add a chart to your Tablix.  You either copy/paste your working(!!!) chart into the tablix and then you preview and you get: "The chart 'Chart1' has a detail member with inner members...

In SSRS high availability is achieved through a Scale-out deployment that is placed behind a Network Load Balancer (NLB).  The NLB is then responsible for routing requests to Report Server nodes that are responding to requests.  High Availability...

This post is intended for ISVs or Product Development organizations who are planning to integrate Reporting Services into their product.   Over the years I have seen a number of products do this and some get it right and some encounter issues...

We have seen multiple customers with issues when customizing the Security Extension Sample ( 2005 , 2008 ) that is available on http://www.codeplex.com/ . This is the sample that demonstrates how to create a Forms Authentication solution with SQL Server...

Over the years, we have seen a number of IIS related issues that cause trouble for users who deploy SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. We have tried to resolve these in the MSDN Forums on a case by case basis. Now we have compiled the common issues with...

Recently I have had little time to devote to blogging, but I did want to pass along a couple of references that I tend to provide to customers, partners, and Microsoft internal folks as they dig deep into SSRS. Robert Bruckner has a great blog which offers...

Denny Lee and I presented on Wednesday at the SQL PASS Community Summit 2008 on Building SSRS 2008 Large Scale Solutions. The slide deck is available for conference attendees at from the conference site . However, the format is PDF and during the transformation...

As part of this blog, I comment about Notification Services. I wanted to provide you the following information about the availability of a pre-release SQL Server 2005 Notification Services components package. If you have questions about SQL Server 2005...

We've just released SQL Server 2008 (it feels great by the way!) and there have already been many e-mails asking us where to find Report Builder 2.0. You can find an update on the release plan for Report Builder 2.0 on the main Reporting Services Blog...

In a previous post , I talked about issues with repeated login prompts when trying to access either Report Server or Report Manager using your browser. Recently, during an upgrade of our internal test server we identified a new type of HTTP 401 (Unauthorized...

Much has been said up to now about the scalability work the Reporting Services team has done in the SQL 2008 version. However, until now, there were no numbers to back up the architecture discussions. The SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT) just...

I’ve seen customers run into authentication issues using the SQL Server 2008 February CTP of Reporting Services (you should all give it a try!). This post provides solutions and a detailed discussion of the underlying causes. The material in this post...

Hi everyone - I've been away from my blog for a little while. However, now again I have some time to start blogging again. I get tons of customer questions over the course of a week. I’d like to share with you how I make my life easier by using Internet...

Update 5/3/2010: With time and experience, we learn. So of course an easier way exists to do what this blog post states. Just set the Idle Time-out to zero on the Application Pool configuration. Bill Staples gives the UI snapshot of where to make the...

I wanted to provide a quick note on how to scale test Reporting Services. Partially I'm posting this so I don't lose the link :-). Often we are asked how best to scale test Reporting Services and what scale numbers to expect coming from a particular...

This post is about a consequence of the calling ReportViewer.Reset() method related to revaluating parameter default values. The Report Viewer controls are a great way to integrate reports into your applications. You can see some examples here: ...

A while ago I wrote a blog post to explain how to monitor subscription status. You can read it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/lukaszp/archive/2005/12/30/monitoring-subscription-status-also-calling-rs-soap-methods-from-inside-reports.aspx Today, I updated...

Just adding a quick note about the new MSDN Home Page for Reporting Services. It has links to many great pieces of content including articles, blogs, Webcasts, and references to online docs. http://msdn2.Microsoft.com/en-us/sql/aa336316.aspx Take care...

It seems there is a ton on confusion about how to programmatically use multi-value parameters. Here's how to do it using the SOAP API for report execution: http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1515942&SiteID=1 Here's how...

Reporting Services is an example of a system that both handles interactive user load and schedule load. It is also allows interactive users to schedule reports. A poor scheduling decision on the part of one user can can have significant impact on the...

With the coming change to Daylight Savings Time in the United States, you will need to update your NS application databases for NS v2 and NS v2 SP1. For SQL Server 2005 NS, you will need to update your databases for existing applications. SQL Server 2005...

A customer came to the SQL Server Customer lab to investigate a problem with one of the feature I’m responsible for – data-driven subscriptions. In looking at their solution, we discussed any number of problems they had encountered. I realized that it...

I've received questions in the past about whether the report server supports per user snapshost - that is report snapshots customized with different parameter values for a given user. The answer I have always given is no - you get one snapshot per report...

It's been a little while since my last post. I wanted to provide additional information related to my presentation to day at SQL PASS. The talk was extremely well attended - the room was full and standing room only. I hope you got what you were looking...