Russell Christopher's Semi-Useful BI Musings : MOSS

How to use URL Access in Reporting Services SharePoint integration mode

russch — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 01:20:00 GMT

URL Access still works if you’ve put your SSRS instance into MOSS integration mode, it just takes a bit of extra work. Here’s an example using the following assumptions:

· SSRS itself is installed on a machine called ssrsBox

· MOSS is installed on mossBox

· The report “aReport” is stored in a report library named “theReportLibrary”

http://ssrsBox/reportserver?http://mossBox/theReportLibrary/aReport.RDL

…if SSRS was installed on the same machine as MOSS (maybe on port 8080?) your URL will look like this:

http://mossBox:8080/reportserver?http://mossBox/theReportLibrary/aReport.RDL

Using the “old” Reporting Services web parts in MOSS 2007

russch — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:07:00 GMT

(Thanks to Carolyn Chau)

If necessary, you can use the old SSRS web parts we provide in Reporting Services 2005 with SPS/MOSS 2007. However, they won’t work automatically – you'll have to get them registered in the GAC with stsadmin.exe. Example:

Stsadm.exe –o addwppack –filename”c:\program files\microsoft sql server\90\tools\reporting services\rswebparts.cab” -globalinstall

rsWindowsIntegratedSecurityDisabled error when running Reporting Services report in SharePoint integrated mode

russch — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 23:26:00 GMT

I published a report to SPS, using a custom data source which simply pointed to the database in question and used Integrated Security. When I ran the report, the following error was thrown:

An error has occurred during report processing (rsProcessingAborted)

This data source is configured to use Windows integrated security. Windows integrated security is disabled for this report server. (rsWindowsIntegratedSecurityDisabled )

"Huh?", I thought. Sure, I can disable SQL Authentication in the DB Engine, but I had no idea I could turn off Windows Integrated security!

Well, when setting up your SSRS/MOSS integration settings, you certainly can. I remembered that the fine manual provided by Heidi and friends mentioned that if you set Authentication Mode to "Trusted Account" in the Configure Reporting Services Integration screen of SPS Central Admin, you can't use Windows auth.

So I checked, and sure enough, I had fat-fingered this setting. When I switched it back to "Windows Authentication", everything worked nicely.

To check for yourself, follow these steps:

1. Launch SharePoint 3.0 Central Administration.

2. Click Application Management in the left-hand navigation bar.

3. Under the Reporting Services item list, click Manage Integration Settings.

4. Check out Authentication Mode!

Reporting Services Login dialog appears when deploying to MOSS/WSS

russch — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 15:29:00 GMT

Brian Welcker does it again! In this post he describes a situation that's been causing me a great deal of angst. Essentially, after getting MOSS/SSRS integration working, you get prompted to login when publishing from BIDS - and entering credentials doesn't get you past the dialog, either.

I'm not big on "link wrangling", but over the past few days there have been too many good ones to pass up. Read this. Now.

Can’t see “Reporting Services” on the SPS Application Management page after installing SPS/SSRS add-in

russch — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 21:42:00 GMT

After installing the SPS/MOSS & SSRS integration add-in, I surfed to the Application Management page of SPS…and no “Reporting Services” list was apparent.

So, I used some information at Brian Welcker’s blog and took a look through all of the rs_sp_?.log files in the %temp% folder. I found that the file generated during the installation had the following entry:

“SSRSCustomActionError: SharePoint is installed, but not configured”.

Next, I checked Web.Config for SPS/MOSS, looking for references to the ReportingServices.SharePoint.UI.* assemblies we add during the configuration stage of the add-in setup. They weren’t there.

A reinstall of the add-in solved the problem, adding the necessary entries into the Web.Config file. All was well after that.

Reporting Services and MOSS/WSS integration in a farm deployment

russch — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 19:30:00 GMT

Now that SQL 2005 SP2 CTP3 supports installing SSRS on a different box than the MOSS/WSS machine, people have been bumping into problems getting everything working properly. After installing / configuring, common error messages you may see are:

"Failed to find the XML file at location '12\Template\Features\DataConnectionLibrary\Feature.xml'()"

and/or...

“Could not load file or assembly ‘Microsoft.Office.Server’ or one of its dependencies.

Here are the basic requirements you need to take care of in order to get everything working:

Reporting Box

· SSRS 2005, SP2 CTP3

· .NET Framework 3.0 (for WSS/MOSS)

· WSS/MOSS Web Front-End (will lay down assemblies SSRS Integration needs)

WSS/MOSS Box

· WSS/MOSS (and all pre-requisites for installing same)

· SSRS integration add-in (SharePointRS.msi)

A key point not yet in the readme and/or documents is that you must install the same version of MOSS and/or WSS on both machines. You may not mix SKUs, or integration will break on the reporting box with the first error message mentioned above. This also means you’ll be purchasing a MOSS/WSS license for the SSRS machine.

Publishing Reporting Services reports to MOSS

russch — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:03:00 GMT

(Many, many thanks to Heidi Steen of the super-duper UE team at Microsoft for providing the material below. Hell, she even created screen shots!)

Now that lots of folks are happily playing around with SSRS/MOSS integration, it’s important to understand exactly how you publish the things to MOSS via Business Intelligence Studio. You still use the same dialogs you’re used to, but plug different values into them. Here are some nice, step-by-step instructions:

1. In SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio,

open an existing or new Report Server project.

2. From the Project menu, click Properties. The <project>

Property Pages dialog box opens.

3. Choose the Configuration you use to publish to a SharePoint site.

For example, Active(Debug) or Production.

4. In the Deployment section, for the optional TargetDataSourceFolder,

type a fully qualified URL to a library or library folder. For example,

http://server01/mycustomreportingsite/Shared Documents.

If left blank, this defaults to the TargetReportFolder value.

5. For TargetReportFolder, type a fully qualified URL to a

library or library folder. For example,

http://server01/mycustomreportingsite/Shared Documents.

6. For TargetServerURL, type a URL to a SharePoint

top-level site or sub-site. If you do not specify

a site, the default top-level site is used. For

example, http://servername, http://servername/site

or http://servername/site/subsite.

7. Click OK.

8. In Solution Explorer, right-click on the report

you want to publish, and click Deploy. The report

is published to the location specified in

TargetReportFolder. Deployment errors appear in the Output window.

NOTE: In order to upload data sources and reports to MOSS, the user in question must have “Contribute” or “Full Control” permissions.

Below, I’ve attached some screenshots which demonstrate publishing to a library in a custom and default MOSS site (again, thanks to Heidi!)

Reporting Services and MOSS SSO?

russch — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 00:21:00 GMT

Now that SSRS can integrate with MOSS, I've started to see questions around whether one can use SharePoint single sign on with Reporting Services.

Short answer: No.

If you'd like the feature added to a future version of the SSRS add-in for MOSS, leave a comment and tell us why - I'll happily pass your feedback along to the product team.

Provisioning Shared Services is MOSS / SPS taking forever (my dumb mistake)

russch — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 22:23:00 GMT

I just learned a hard, cruel lesson today. I’ve been trying to configure Shared Services on a MOSS machine, and I found that once I started the process, it would run for 60+ minutes without completing.

Checking in the Shared Services window of Central Administration, I would see a “Provisioning in progress” message, but it, never, ever completed. CPU and disk util were flat and it was pretty apparent nothing was going on. I bounced the box several times to try altering the accounts I was using during the configuration process, and had no success.

Well, one of my buddies led me astray in an effort to help out. He told me to stop the Windows SharePoint Services Timer because it tends to kick off expensive jobs (indexing), etc. So, being the resource miser I am, I turned it off.

Turns out, this service KICKS OFF most of the provisioning work! (I’m such a moron). After ripping up my Captain Riker pajamas up in frustration, I realized that this was one of the few “optimizations” I had on this box that I hadn’t put on others…When I turned the service back on, CPU jumped, disks starting jamming, and about 3 minutes later I was done.

So, if you don’t want to mess up your favorite Star Trek ‘jammies, don’t turn this service off until AFTER you have fully configured your machine!

SQL Server 2005 SP2 CTP3 (December) is live!

russch — Wed, 20 Dec 2006 18:54:00 GMT

CTP3 is now downloadable at:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D2DA6579-D49C-4B25-8F8A-79D14145500D&displaylang=en#QuickInfoContainer

As far as reporting-heads are concerned, CTP3 is good for us because it removes the CTP2 requirement that you install SSRS & MOSS on the same machine to do integration.

I'm not sure if there is a "CTP3 SSRS/MOSS Add-in", too (I assume there is)...As soon as I find out, I'll post here!

(updated)

about 3 hours later, I was told the Add-in is also indeed posted. Find it here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4e50be6e-3f92-4552-a78c-b3be1d94d5da&DisplayLang=en

Data Refresh in Excel Services fails with "SSO has failed with the following error code -2140995579, exception: Error in the application"

russch — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 22:37:00 GMT

I've been playing quite a bit with Excel Services the last few weeks, and ran into a problem around refreshing data in a worksheet stored in Excel Services when I used Single Sign On (SSO) in the ODC.

I also noticed that each time my report failed to refresh data, the error in the subject of this post got dumped into the event log.

I asked for help, then did some digging. Turns out this error is one of those "by design" (or, "by bad design") issues. Some of you might call it a bug :)

In essence, if the account you use for the Shared Services Provider (as in "SharedServices1") is different than your Farm and/or SSO Account identities, you'll get this error. They must all be the same, even though I didn't see this documented anywhere (and to be fair, I haven't spent tons of time looking).

Thanks to Chris Nicholas for his help on this problem!

Confessions of a reformed SPS hater - MOSS and Microsoft Business Intelligence

russch — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 05:33:00 GMT

OK, I admit it -- For years, I really didn't like SharePoint. I thought it was silly -- SharePoint sites were things that people started on a whim (like those "blog whatchamacallits") and then quickly abandoned. Collaboration? Yeah, whatever -- just attach the workbook/document to email and shut up already...I was a SharePoint curmudgeon.

Well, over the past week, I've spent quite a bit of time with the next version of SharePoint - Microsoft Office 2007 SharePoint Server (MOSS). And just like I hated to admit that blogs are actually worthwhile and that that the internets aren't just a bunch of tubes, I gotta say, MOSS is cool as hell.

Using MOSS, I'm able to:

Create and store Excel Reports - Excel Services ROCK!
Store and render SQL Reporting Services Reports
Create and display KPIs from Excel, Analysis Services and SharePoint list
Implement a BI dashboard in about 5 minutes

...and this is coming from a guy who knew nothing about SPS and didn't WANT to know anything about it.

All of the sudden, SPS has changed from this thing I sort of snickered about into a tool I don't think anyone in their right mind should live without. Jeesh, I feel like a complete marketing weasel here, but MOSS is very, very cool.