Direct Reports : SP2

Tribal Thunder (SharePoint White Papers Available)

bwelcker — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 10:29:00 GMT

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...(read more)

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

bwelcker — Sat, 19 May 2007 23:32:00 GMT

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.

Pocket Symphony (Enabling SSRS Feature in non-default Site Collections)

bwelcker — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 06:42:00 GMT

After installing the Reporting Services Add-in for Integration with SharePoint, you may find that the Reporting Services features are not visible in your SharePoint web sites. Why does this happen? Because when the add-in is installed, it is only activated for the sites in the default Site Collection.

Steps to resolve:

Bowse to the 'Home' or root URL of the site collection.
Click on Site Actions -->Site Settings --> Site Collection Features.
Choose the "Reporting Services Integration" feature, under the list of features for Site "Collection Features".
Press the "Activate" button.

Note: You will need to be owner of the site collection in order to view the "Site Collection features" link.

Candy Apple Grey (Installing SSRS and Windows Vista)

bwelcker — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 02:34:00 GMT

It's a bit tricky to get Reporting Services (including the report server that comes with SQL Express with Advanced Services) to work on Windows Vista. The key is to turn on the right set of IIS components in the "Turn Windows features on or off" tool in the Vista control panel. Here is the list of required IIS features you need to add for Reporting Services to work:

Web Management Tools

IIS 6 Management Compatibility
IIS 6 WMI Compatibility
IIS Metabase and IIS 6 configuration compatibility

World Wide Web Services

Application Development

.NET Extensibility
ASP.NET
ISAPI Extensions
ISAPI Filters

Common HTTP Features

Default Document
Directory Browsing
HTTP Redirection
Static Content

Security

Windows Authentication

Note that IIS7 in Vista Home Premium does not include Windows Authentication functionality so it will not work with SSRS.

You will get a compatibility message when you start to install SQL Server 2005. This is to let you know that you will need to install SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 after the installation finishes. You should also read Section 5.5 of the SQL Server 2005 Readme (Reporting Services Considerations for Windows Vista) for known issues and limitations.

Propeller (SP2 is Released!)

bwelcker — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 20:57:00 GMT

It's been a long time coming, but SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is now available. See http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/downloads/servicepacks/sp2.mspx.

Wincing the Night Away (Tips for SSRS in SharePoint Mode)

bwelcker — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 00:53:00 GMT

Here is some useful information about using SSRS in SharePoint Integrated mode (included with SP2):

Installing the SharePoint Add-In

If you plan to upgrade from a previous version of the add-in, you should uninstall the previous add-in then install the new one. After installing the new one, you will need to perform the RS configuration steps in SharePoint Central Administration again.
If you have trouble with the install, take a look at the log files. In addition to the MSI install log, the Add-In also creates another log file named RS_SP_<number>.log. Both logs are found in the "<Drive>:\Documents and Settings\<User_Name>\Local Settings\Temp" folder.
There is a known issue with the naming ReportServer.<culture>.resx files that are install as part of CTP3 in each SharePoint web sites' App_GlobalResources folder. After installing CTP3 this issue manifests itself as the following errors when you try to access any SharePoint web site:

Server Error in '/' Application.
Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed.

To solve this, check the following in IIS Manager for each SharePoint web site:

Explore into <Web site>\App_GlobalResources

Do you see any Reportserver.<culture>.resx files (where culture is a string like EN / FR/ CS etc.)?

If yes, then delete all Reportserver.<culture>.resx except for ReportServer.resx file.

Deploying Reports to Report Server that is in SharePoint Mode

Use the updated Report Designer that ships with SQL 2005 SP2 CTP.
Deployment paths need to change for deploying to a SharePoint Document Library with settings something like this:

TargetDataSourceFolder: http://<MyServer>/<mySharePointsite>/<my_DataSource_Folder>/
TargetReportFolder: http://<MyServer>/<mySharePointsite>/<my_Report_Folder>/
TargetServerURL: http://<MyServer>/<mySharePointsite>/

If you see a login screen when deploying reports, inspect the web.config fle of the SharePoint web site for the following entry:

<location path="_vti_bin/ReportServer/ReportServiceAuthentication.asmx">
    <system.web>
      <authorization>
        <allow users="*" />
      </authorization>
    </system.web>
</location>

Make sure there is only one such entry in the web.config file. Delete any duplicates. Next retry deploying. This is a known issue in the CTP release that we are fixing for RTM.

The Destroyed Room (Hyperion Essbase and Reporting Services White Paper)

bwelcker — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 00:30:00 GMT

One of the new Reporting Services features of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 is integration with the Hyperion Essbase 9.3. Similar to building reports on SQL Server Analysis Services or SAP NetWeaver BI, this integration includes a new .NET data extension and a new query designer for Report Designer. If you are interested in how this works, you can take a look at this newly published white paper.

By the way, you also can download the final CTP for SP2 to give this feature (along with the new SharePoint intergation) a try.

Today! (Cleaning up Reporting Services SharePoint Add-In Setup Problems)

bwelcker — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 21:28:00 GMT

Some people have had problems during installation of the new Reporting Services Add-in for Microsoft SharePoint. If the add-in setup fails while to add the Reporting Services feature to the sites, some of your SharePoint sites will no longer work. You can tell if the custom action failed by looking for a file named RS_SP_#.log in your %temp% directory. If you have a log file there and your install failed, you will need to manually clean up your web.config files to get SharePoint up and running again.

First, you will need to locate the SharePoint virtual directories on your server. Typically these are located at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\wss\VirtualDirectories. This folder contains several folders with names which are numbers representing the ports used by your SharePoint sites. In each folder you will need to remove the following entries from the web.config file:

and

Once you remove these lines, save the file. You must do this for every web.config file under the above directory.

To get around the issue, you need to add the user who is running setup as one of the Site Collection administrators before you run the setup. You can do this though the Site Adminstration page.

This is a known issue with our CTP2 setup and has been addressed in CTP3.