Direct Reports

Double Nickels on the Dime (Leaving the Reporting Services Team)

2007-12-13T09:49:00Z

The rumors are true. I will be leaving the Reporting Service team after 7 years and SQL Server after 10 years. Here is the message that I sent to my team: It first dawned on me about 3 months ago that I had been in the same position for close to 10 years, nearly a quarter of my life, causing me to reflect on my career and accomplishments. When I joined the MS Repository team in 1997 (which soon became part of SQL Server), my goal was to join a product team building world-class enterprise software....(read more)

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (What's up with Report Builder?)

2007-12-12T00:33:58Z

Hopefully, you have gotten a chance to work with the latest CTP of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services . But if you have, you may be a bit puzzled by the report design options in the CTP. Specifically: Report Builder looks just like it did in SSRS 2005. Report Designer is hosted in the VS 2005 shell and looks pretty much like it did in SSRS 2005 (i.e. no tablix or Dundas charts). There is a new tool called "Report Designer Preview" with an Office look and feel and support for 2008 RDL. However, it...(read more)

Tribal Thunder (SharePoint White Papers Available)

2007-12-11T10:29:00Z

After many months of working on getting them posted, I'm excited to let you know that two whitepapers on the integration between SQL Server Reporting Services and SharePoint are now available. SQL Server 2005 Integration with Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Troubleshooting Integration with SQL Server 2005 and Microsoft SharePoint Technologies Enjoy!...(read more)

Everybody (Why Leave IIS?)

2007-12-04T23:34:03Z

If you have gotten a chance to try an early build of SQL Server Reporting 2008 Reporting Services, you know that one of the changes in the product is the removal of the Internet Information Services (IIS) dependency. I have gotten some questions about the motivation behind this change so I thought I would give you a quick peek behind the decision. The first reason we moved away from IIS is for better configuration. IIS was built several years ago to do lots of things, including serving up web pages...(read more)

Younger Than Yesterday (ReportViewer in VS 2008)

2007-11-26T20:04:53Z

As most of you probably know by now, Visual Studio 2008 is now available. What you might not have noticed is a new version of the ReportViewer control and local /embedded report editing experience. Included with VS 2008 are the following new features: Design-time: New Report Projects: Two new project templates for quickly creating reporting applications. When you create a new Report Application project, you get a blank report ( .rdlc ) and a form with a ReportViewer control bound to the report. Report...(read more)

Laser Guided Missiles (Report Localization through Parameters)

2007-07-11T18:09:00Z

As localization is not a built-in feature for Reporting Services, people have tried a a variety of techniques for localizing reports. One technique is to use the LocID propertie to create a version of the RDL in each language. Another approach is to have a single report and create a custom assembly to load the strings for each label. Here is an relatively easy technique for providing localized reports using hidden parameters. First, you will need to create a table to hold the translations. The following...(read more)

Marquee Moon (Field References in Page Headers and Footers)

2007-06-20T09:57:00Z

One of the questions that I get often is about putting database fields in their SSRS report page header and/or footer. Note that putting fields in the page header and footer is not the same as putting a data region in these sections. Because of the impact on layout (what happens when it grows?), we do not want to have growing items in these sections. Therefore, any fields in these regions will be a single textbox at an report level aggregate scope (so there is only one instance). You might know about...(read more)

Personal Best (The BI Survey)

2007-06-16T22:26:00Z

Some of you may be familiar with Nigel Pendse’s OLAP Report . This year, the survey is broadening to include more BI functionality and is being renamed "The BI Survey". If you have some time, take a moment and fill out the survey . We (and the other BI vendors) take the results seriously....(read more)

When I Was Born for the 7th Time (Thoughts from TechEd)

2007-06-16T21:46:00Z

Last week I attended TechEd in Orlando, Florida . Here are my thoughts on the event. This year was TechEd's 15th anniversary. I realized on the way down that I was attending my 10th consecutive TechEd. When I started attending, TechEd was about 2,000 or so people. This year, TechEd had over 13,000 people attending 480 Breakout Sessions, 200 Chalk talks, and 190 Hands-on Labs. In general, this TechEd was much more low key for Reporting Services than last year. I think this is because many of people...(read more)

Gone Glimmering (Fix for Visual Studio Hang)

2007-06-09T00:48:26Z

I am very happy to announce that a fix has been released for the notorious "Visual Studio cannot shut down because a modal dialog is open" bug. I know that many of you are getting this daily when using the SQL Server 2005 Report Designer. You can read the KB article for the fix here. Currently, you will need to get the fix from Microsoft Customer Support but we are working to get this posted publicly.

Perfect Prescription (OneNote is Really Cool)

2007-06-07T00:56:00Z

I think that you might be surprised how long it takes people within Microsoft to adopt new software. While there are some software that we are "strongly encouraged" to adopt <g>, what applications we use on a day to day basis is generally up to each one of us. I'm usually so busy trying out the latest features of my own product that I don't have time to try out the other stuff that is coming out from around the company.

Take OneNote, for example. Although it has been in Office for two versions, I never gave it a try. My original reluctance was basd on the mistaken assumption that it was primarily for tablet users. After that, I just never had the bandwidth to learn how to use it. So I stuck with Outlook, Word, or Notepad for taking notes. Since Office 2007 was released, several of my team members started calling me a luddite for not giving it a try so I took the dive. And you know what? It's really cool. I'm sure I'm not using half of the features but just the ability to not worry about where to save stuff makes taking notes a lot easier.

So, I'm on my way to TechEd writing the notes for my presentations in OneNote. Even this blog entry was written in OneNote then pasted into Live Writer (which is a very nice tool in itself). Now if domestic flights only had Internet connections...

Dreamy (Reporting Services at TechEd)

2007-06-04T19:28:00Z

Unlike previous years, I decided not to attend the first day of TechEd. This means that I missed BobMu's keynote but you can read about the details from many of the TechEd bloggers.

If you read the press release from TechEd today, we announced the official name for the next release of SQL Server - SQL Server 2008 (so long, Katmai). You can also download the first CTP. While I would encourage you to try some of the new features in the CTP, you are going to be a little disappointed if you are looking for new Reporting Services features. We have scheduled our first set of new features for the next CTP - so stay tuned for a few more months. If you attend one of our TechEd sessions, you will get a preview of what is coming.

Our second big announcement from TechEd was that we have acquired the data visualization products of Dundas Software. Many of you have been using the enhanced chart for Reporting Services along with the gauge and map custom report items. We realized the importance of data visualization components for reporting so we purchased this codebase for inclusion in future versions of SSRS. We are working on the integration right now so I can't promise how much will make it into SQL Server 2008.

As for TechEd itself, I'm heading out tomorrow. Feel free to stop by the Business Intelligence part of the Learning Center and say hi. If you are looking for some Reporting Services related content, try these sessions:

BIN 305 - Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
DAT 201 - The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Overview
BIN 202 - Third Annual Business Intelligence Power Hour
BIN04-TLC - Reporting Services Rendering Tips and Tricks
BIN 306 - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Advanced Report Design
BIN 318 - Reporting Services Futures: Report Authoring for Information Workers
BIN05-TLC - Integrating Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
BIN15-TLC - Reporting Services Programmability
BIN 306R - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Advanced Report Design

Tago Mago (New Version of Radius)

2007-06-03T08:12:59Z

I wanted to give some props to my friends at 90 Degree Software (Vancouver, Canada) on the latest release of their report authoring tool, Radius. Radius is a report design tool based on the Reporting Services Report Definition Langauge (RDL). If you are looking for something with more flexibility than Report Builder but a little friendlier than Report Designer, Radius is a good choice. With each release, they have added support for more of SSRS Report Definition Language and the ability to share pieces of RDL (queries, parameters, data regions, etc.) is really cool.

At the End of Paths Taken (Modifying Where Clause when All Parameter Values are Selected)

2007-05-19T23:32:00Z

With the return of “Select All” in Service Pack 2, all multi-value parameters allow the user to pick all of the available values. But what if you want to remove the predicate from your WHERE clause instead of generating a long set of values in the IN predicate?

You can accomplish this is via an expression-based query and an internal parameter.

First, create a second parameter in your report. It should be have a new name, multi-valued, use the same valid values query and the default values set to the valid values query as well. In addition, mark the "internal" flag in the parameters dialog so it is not displayed to the user.

Next, change your main report query to an conditional expression that compares the number of selected values to the number of available values (which will always be selected in the new parameter). For example:

="SELECT Hour, Month, Year, Username, Sitename, Cookie FROM dbo.GlobalIISLog " & IIF(Parameters!ComputerName.Count = Parameters!AllComputerNames.Count,"", " WHERE (sComputername IN (@ComputerName))")

I have attached a sample report that demonstrates this technique.

Sky Blue Sky (MS BI Conference Notes)

2007-05-19T19:53:49Z

Wow, what a show! I spent this week recovering from the first ever Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference. Conferences in downtown Seattle are always fun because I live in Seattle and don't have to cross the bridge to get to the Microsoft campus. I'd like to thank all of the folks that came up and told me how they were using SSRS and how useful the blog was to them. Here's a quick rundown of the show highlights for me.

Tuesday

The opening reception has really nice food (big prawns) and lots of people that I haven't seen in years.

Wednesday

During the first keynote, Jeff Raikes announces our acquisition of OfficeWriter from SoftArtisans. Well, technically, he announced that we acquired the company, which is not the case. We acquired the technology for a future version of SSRS and they will continue to sell the existing product. The details are correct in the press release.
Jeff also announces that the next version of SQL Server, code-named "Katmai", will ship next year. Yes, that is 2008, not 2010 or 2011.
I do a podcast where I talk a little about the conference and Katmai and the upcoming Seahawks season. The rest of the NFC west has improved but so have we. Should be a good season.
My session on Integration of Office SharePoint Server and Reporting Services (white paper here) went well except for the beginning of the demo. I was trying to show how you can configure an instance of SSRS to be in SharePoint Integrated mode. Unfortunately, I have multiple instances of SSRS on the demo machine and I was configuring the wrong one. I finally figured it out but it was a little scary for a few minutes.
Lots and lots of questions about RS Katmai at the exhibit hall reception. I know people are excited to get their hands on it and you will be able to in a couple of months.
The Panorama party at the Space Needle was a blast. From the observation deck, you can just barely make out my house (actually, the cell phone tower beside my house).

Thursday

Ted Kummert, my VP, talks in depth about Katmai in his keynote. Our product manager Francois does a demo of OfficeWriter.
I reprise my "executive dashboard" demo at the BI Power Hour. In my demo, I show a CustomReportItem that I built that allows for interactive KPIs within a grid. By clicking on a cell, you can mark it as good (O) or bad (X). By the end of the demo, the crowd realizes that it is actually a tic tac toe game. I'll post the code over the next couple of weeks.
The PerformancePoint team does a very nice "Deal or No Deal" game show and manage to get Bill Baker to put on a blonde wig. Patrick Husting posted some nice pictures from the session.
Cool attendee party at the Experience Music Project (aka the Jimi Hendrix museum).

Friday

Steve Ballmer does a nice job (as usual) on his keynote by articulating the importance of BI and how Microsoft's commitment to this space.