Random Thoughts on Technology

Using DelegConfig version 2.0 (beta) tool for troubleshooting Kerberos Delegation issues

emilianb — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:25:00 GMT

In april 2009, I posted an article on using Brian Murphy Booth's DelegConfig tool for troubleshooting Kerberos delegation issues.

Today I'll talk a bit about the version 2.0 of the tool which brings some cool new features and also supports IIS 7.0.

A full list of new features and changes can be found here: http://blogs.iis.net/brian-murphy-booth/archive/2009/04/22/delegconfig-v2-beta.aspx .

However, I will concentrate on the coolest new feature - The Wizard.

The version 2 of the tool is set up in the same way the previous version was, which is basically configuring it as an ASP.NET Application in your IIS Server (Steps 1 - 5 from my previous post still apply).

The difference is that now, using the wizard, you can analyze a front-end other than the HTTP application which ran under the same application pool as DelegConfig. For the other nodes/hops, you can follow the wizard all the way to the backend, specifying for each step the type of service, port, identity to receive in the end a nice report displaying all the recommendations but also the option to fix a few of the detected issues - SPNs, Trust for Delegation.

So, on the main page you will have links to: Wizard, SetSPN page that allows you to add or remove SPNs, SetDelegation page that allows you to modify the Delegation parameters in AD for an account, Tests page which allows you to do a quick test of authentication in a double hop scenario to a SQL Server, File Server or Web Server.

Accessing the Wizard, will get you started with the wizard.

1. After clicking NEXT on the first page, you will be asked if the current application pool, the application pool under which we configured DelegConfig, represents our front-end. I will assume my front-end is actually on another machine, using a different account, so I will choose just Next without clicking the Yes Button (see below).

2. Service Type of Front-End page

This page allows me to configure the type of service for my front-end. I will assume for this example, an HTTP application.

3. Host Name

On this page we will configure the name used for accessing the service. If my http application would be configured with Host Headers so that the URL for the application would differ from the NetBIOS name, I would of course specify the HOST Header value. If my application would be published on http://contoso.internal.com/Front-End , the host name I would specify would be:Contoso.internal.com

4. Load Balanced.

This is a new feature allowing us check for configuration of Load Ballanced or Clustered services

5. Kernel Mode

If the service I'm adding currently is an HTTP class service, this page allows me to tell the wizard if I'm using the new IIS 7.0 feature called Kernel Mode Authentication (for more information: http://blogs.msdn.com/sudeepg/archive/2009/02/08/iis-7-kernel-mode-authentication.aspx ).

For this example I will assume I'm not using IIS 7 or Kernel Authentication.

6. Port Number or Instance Name

This page allows me to configure the port used by my service or the instance name.

7. Service Account Name

This is the identity of my service. The SPNs would have to exist under this account and if this service needs to delegate credentials further to another service, this account would also have to be trusted for delegation. If the identity is NETWORK SERVICE, LOCAL SYSTEM, LOCAL SERVICE, the wizard will check the host computer's machine account in Active Directory.

8. Trust for Delegation

This is the step where we tell the wizard if this is the last service in the chain or not. If this service needs to pass credentials further, we would respond "Yes" to the question: "Does the HTTP service running on emilianb07 need to delegate ("pass") credentials to another server?"

9. Delegation Type

If we use constrained delegation, we will select "Trust this account for delegation to specified services only", otherwise we select "Trust this account for delegation to any service (Kerberos only)"

What will happen now is that we will go through each step up to the 8^th, to configure the 2-nd tier service. At the 8^th Step we will be asked again if the service needs to delegate credentials further. If we answer yes, we will configure yet another service, with the same information - type, host, port, identity, etc. This repeats until we choose "No" at the step 8.

When this happens, the Next button will become "Finished" and when we click it, we will get our report.

The report will have a section for each node/hop, where we will get answers to the following questions:

"Is Domain Account?", "Has valid SPN?", "Has duplicate SPN?", "Trusted for Delegation?". If duplicate or missing SPNs are found we have the possibility to fix this by clicking on the "Fix this for me." button which will take us to the SetSPN.aspx page. The page will already have filled the suggested SPNs to be added so all we need to have is an account with enough privileges on AD to do the change.

The Same thing applies to the "Trust for Delegation" part, which will take us to the Set/Delegation.aspx page.

An "overall Status" paragraph contains answers to the questions: "Is Domain Account?" referring to the end user, "Authentication Method?", "Impersonation Level", "Will delegation Succeed".

However, if we run the delegconfig in an application pool other than the actual front-end and on a different machine, we can ignore this paragraph as it will actually check the Authentication method used for authenticating to the Tool itself rather than the actual front-end, and the impersonation level relative to the user accessing the DelegConfig tool. Therefore, the answer to the question "Will Delegation Succeed?" might not apply to the actual environment.

HTH,

Emi

Doubled records in Excel output of a SSRS Report with expandable regions

emilianb — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:19:00 GMT

Some customers have lately raised the discussion around, what they thought it was, a misbehavior of the Excel Rendering extension when dealing with expandable regions. The behavior can be described as follows.

On Reporting Services 2008, we are exporting to excel a report with multiple row groups with visibility triggers on every group, the visbility being controlled by the parend group. This produces a report with interactive functionality - Expandable regions. While in HTML, the report looks and works fine, in Excel the last group will display a duplicate record below the data record.

Exemplified on an AW report, this behavor will look like below.

HTML Rendered Version:

Excel version showing doubled records:

The behavior we are currently seeing – duplication of the details row is caused by the following. In order to support expandable regions in excel, we need to have rows that will be collapsed or expanded. In excel, on the last row of a grouping, we will need to have the values that will be displayed on the row visible while in collapsed state. Apart from this last row, we’ll need to have the rows visible while in expanded state.

The apparent difference between HTML and Excel comes from a difference in behavior related to expandable regions in Excel vs. HTML. Logically the two solutions are the same. The main problem comes from a minor fault in design of the report.

In HTML, you rely on an empty row just before the real values, so that when collapsed, the cell on level 7 is empty. This solution doesn’t work while in Excel, because Excel will actually take the last row to put it in collapsed state and not the first. Therefore, it will appear as the data is different while they both contain the same data.

The solution would be to redesign the expandable regions and the table of the report so that you achieve the needed result.

I will exemplify with the AdventureWorks report below.

Initially, the report’s design looks like this:

Even though we have multiple levels of grouping, we only have one row.

Since in collapsed mode, on the details we need the sum of the prices and no name for the products, what we should do is make sure that we create headers for our group like below:

This will produce:

We do this once again to add the second level and we will have:

Now, if we add visibility settings accordingly, we will have expandable regions like below:

If collapsed, they will not show a product name (OK) but will also not show a total price (KO). For this, all we need to do is add a total to the corresponding cell in design:

Just selecting the correct field from the list will automatically add the Sum, which is exactly what we need.

Now, our collapsed report will look like this in HTML:

And finally, in Excel we have the expected result as well:

Collapsed:

You can see that the problem is solved and the report contains the correct layout and data.

Basically our problem comes from a small design issue that not only that produces this limitation, but also might produce incorrect results.

HTH

SSRS service might not start after installing Windows Security patches and rebooting the machine

emilianb — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:02:00 GMT

Sometimes, if your server is under heavy load, or after installing Windows Security patches, like http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms09-004.mspx , you might experience issues where the SSRS service fails to start with the following information being logged in the Windows Event Logs:

The SQL Server Reporting Services (MSSQLSERVER) service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

The main reason for which this might happen is that the maximum allowed time for a service start operation has been surpassed. By default, the timeout is set to 30 seconds, which can be a little short in some situations. Therefore, the first thing to try would be to increase the timeout period.

As to the causes for which more time is needed for a service startup, for SQL builds lower than CU9 for SQL Server 2005 SP2 (9.0.3282), this issue might be caused by the fact that the service, before loading the assemblies, needs to verify the Certificate Revocation List from HTTP://CRL.microsoft.com.

Having this in mind, the options you have for addressing similar behaviors are:

1. Adding an entry to the HOSTS file (%Windows%\System32\Drivers\ETC) to direct the service to an invalid IP while trying to reach CRL.Microsoft.com. An example would be adding the following line:

127.0.0.1crl.microsoft.com

2. Increasing the value that corresponds to the maximum time allowed for starting a service. Changing this value will have no negative impact, but require a reboot of the machine. This solution is described in the article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922918 , but in short, you must change (or create) the registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control,ServicesPipeTimeout (DWORD) to specify a value sufficient to allow the service to start. This value represents the timeout in milliseconds. (An example of a valid value is 60000)

3. Installing CU9 for SQL Server 2005 SP2 - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/953752 .

4. Installing SP3 for SQL Server 2005

- Download page : http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=AE7387C3-348C-4FAA-8AE5-949FDFBE59C4&displaylang=en

- List of fixes: http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=955706

- Readme files: http://www.microsoft.com/DOWNLOADS/details.aspx?familyid=851C39EE-6F9D-47D9-8ECC-44AC1E9DC182&displaylang=en

- Main page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/sqlserver/bb895958.aspx

Copy 'n' Paste from PDF files generated from SQL Server Reporting Services

emilianb — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:10:00 GMT

Over the last months I've seen more and more customers inquiring about issues when trying to Copy text from PDF files exported from Reporting Services reports and Pasting it into other documents. The issue they were complaining about makes so that pasting of the text fails and instead of the expected text they only get '???????' characters. Especially, some of the users have noticed a change in behavior related to this feature after installing CU6 for SQL Server 2005 SP2; reports that supported this functionality before this package was installed, suddenly stopped working.

I hope to shad some light over this subject and try to explain why some of the text can be exported this way - Copy'n'Paste, and some of the text not and why this happens.

First of all I have to say that the Copy'n'Paste operation from PDF files exported from SSRS is not a supported operation. This means we don't expect this to work as the PDF rendering extension was never designed for this feature.

Having said that, let's see what has changed with CU6 for SQL Server 2005 SP2.

The reason for which Copy’n’Paste doesn’t work as before, after installing CU9 for SQL Server 2005 SP2 is the fact that with CU6 a new logic for dealing with complex text was implemented. After CU6, the decision whether a text is complex or not and is going to be encoded with Glyph IDs instead of ASCII, is done after a different logic than before, thus leading to more text being regarded as complex than before.
According to this new logic, adding a carriage return line feed character is enough to see this text as complex and encode it using Glyph IDs. Encoding the text using Glyph IDs leads to not being able to copy\paste the text anymore. This new logic was added to overcome a different limitation and cannot be reverted at this point.
Because this behavior changed first with Cumulative Update Package 6 - build 9.0.3228.0, any build prior to that should provide more copy/paste
functionality than we currently have. I must however stress that this still doesn’t change the fact that we don’t support this.

Also, SSRS 2008 brings a lot of improvement in the PDF rendering extension and the whole rendering engine. Therefore, you might find that SSRS 2008 behaves better in these situations than SSRS 2005. Still, Copy'n'Paste is not supported even in SSRS 2008.

Having had a lot of requests for this feature, the Product Group has taken this into consideration and is planning to include this functionality sometime in future releases. However we have no estimation yet on when this will happen.

Finally, you will find that text that can be easily encoded in ANSI, also behaves a lot better with Copy'n'Paste than text that contains special, font-specific characters.

HTH,

Emi

Timeouts and Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services

emilianb — Thu, 28 May 2009 11:50:00 GMT

When working with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, there are more levels of execution\session timeout configurations. On one hand we have the ASP.NET session which we have to consider since the SSRS service is actually a ASP.NET Web Service. But then we have also an SSRS “user session”. This has nothing to do with the ASP.NET ‘s session and it’s completely different. SSRS's session contains data related to the report currently executed by a user, the data used in the report, the report state, parameter state, etc...

When we encounter errors like: "ERROR: Throwing Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities.ExecutionNotFoundException: Execution 'n3uh3355xsgfrajxklix1m55' cannot be found" in the SSRS logs, these are related to the SSRS session.

Here below are the configuration options we have in terms of timeout control.

IIS\ASP.NET related:
- executionTimeout - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms824641.aspx - in web.config for ReportServer. This is the maximum amount of time that it takes to process a SOAP message using the TCP protocol.
- Idle Timeout option on the Performance tab in the Application Pool used by Reporting Services in IIS Manager.

SSRS related:

- RecycleTime element in RSReportServer.config – this specifies the recycling period for the entire Application (SSRS Web Service). The default is 720 – in minutes.
- DatabaseQueryTimeout element in RSReportServer.config – Specifies the number of seconds after which a connection to the report server database times out. This value is passed to the System.Data.SQLClient.SQLCommand.CommandTimeout property. Valid values range from 0 to maximum integer. The default is 120. Setting the value to 0 is not recommended; it specifies an unlimited wait time. This is affecting DataSet queries inside the report.
- The SessionTimeout and SessionAccessTimeout system properties. These are the settings controlling the SSRS user session I mentioned in the beginning. The default value for these is 10 minutes, expressed in seconds (600). One could see the SessionTimeout value in the ConfigurationInfo table in the ReportServer database. To modify these system properties’ values you could use a simple script designed for RS.EXE like the one below:

Public Sub Main()
    Dim props() as [Property]
    props = new [Property] () { new [Property](), new [Property]() }

    props(0).Name = "SessionTimeout"
    props(0).Value = 3600

    props(1).Name = "SessionAccessTimeout"
    props(1).Value = 3600

    rs.SetSystemProperties(props)
End Sub

This sample will set the values to 3600 seconds which is too much in most situations. You would need to adjust these values to suit your needs.
For more information about this subject: http://blogs.msdn.com/jgalla/archive/2006/10/11/session-timeout-during-execution.aspx

---

Emi

Slow response time for SQL Server Reporting Services after restart or after period of inactivity - why does it happen and how to fix it -

emilianb — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:33:00 GMT

I can think of 2 separate issues and causes. First is related to the Web Service recycling and the time needed for restarting and reloading its components\assemblies. The second could be a question of response time for a report (the first time it is executed) and could be linked to the caching mechanism.
Below we look at the two different situations.

1. Problem caused by the loading of assemblies. NET after startup (restart) of SSRS Service.
Normally, a response time longer for the first service access SSRS after a restart of the service is normal. The behavior is observed even if the server and the service is not restarted but after a period of inactivity. This behavior can be linked to Recycle options for the IIS service.
One possible solution would be to check that the service is not restarted unnecessarily, and if it is still restarted, forcing the loading of components before users access it.
Full info on the topic of recycling:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb934330.aspx - Application Domains for Report Server Applications

The article describes the two parameters that we have to control the recycling of SSRS: RecycleTime and MaxAppDomainUnloadTime (file RSReportServer.config).
Following a restart of the service SSRS to ensure that the assemblies and necessary components are loaded, and the service will be available to users, we can put a up a solution for a query similar to a PING to the service.
For this task we have several options:

- A script for RS.EXE (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms162839.aspx )
- Use a .NET application to access Reporting Services SOAP API.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms153968.aspx - Integrated Reporting Services using SOAP API
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155131.aspx - Using the SOAP API in a Windows application
- Use a simple application to access Reporting Services URL http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms154537.aspx

2. Problem of execution time for a particular report, the first time.
A different time (longer) for the first execution of a particular report is normal. executions that follow (if the report is run with the same parameters) will take the report cache, and therefore the time performances will be improved.
The document http://technet.microsoft.com/en-gb/library/cc966418.aspx - Planning for Scalability and Performance with Reporting Services contains a paragraph "Report Caching and Storage" on this subject.
We have the options:
- Loading the cache with the help of a subscription-driven data (Data-Driven Subscription) using the NULL Delivery extension.
Full Info:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155927.aspx - Caching a report in Reporting Services
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155876.aspx - How to: preload the Cache (Report Manager)
- In the properties of the report, set the execution in order to use a cached copy. More info: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159241.aspx -- Set the properties of a given report

HTH,

Emi

---------------------------------

Also, check out Evan Basalik's post on SQLBlog about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/sqlblog/archive/2007/11/09/reporting-services-staaaarrrrrtttt-up.aspx

Using DelegConfig tool for troubleshooting Kerberos Delegation issues

emilianb — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:49:00 GMT

A couple of days ago I delivered a presentation on troubleshooting Kerberos configuration issues, especially from the SQL Server's perspective. Part of this presentation I demonstrated the use of Brian Murphy-Booth's (http://blogs.iis.net/brian-murphy-booth) DelegConfig tool and demonstrated how this tool can also be used for configuring SQL Server.

Since a lot of people showed interest in the use of this tool, I thought I'd share some information on its use. Here’s where you can download the tool from: http://www.iis.net/downloads/default.aspx?tabid=34&g=6&i=1434

This tool will help you very easily check and fix the configuration of your IIS application + backend server (SQL, OLAP, etc. ) from a security stand-point in order to ensure Kerberos Authentication and Kerberos Delegation. It will basically check everything that needs to be checked like Active Directory properties for accounts and SPNs and will point you into the right direction for fixing the problems.

The tool is basically simple ASP.NET application that you have to configure in IIS under the same Application Pool as the application whose config you need to check.

Here’s how to configure it:

1. Once you download the tool and unzip the archive you will have a folder called Kerberos (let’s say c:\Kerberos\ )on your hard drive.

For this presentation, let’s say I want to check my ReportServer application config.

2. Open IIS Manager, check the App Pool under which ReportServer runs and create a new Virtual Directory... under the web site of my application.

3. Follow the Wizard and Select an Alias (let’s say DelegConfig), point it to the Kerberos folder and allow Read and Run Scripts permissions (see below) and click Finish

4. Open the Properties for the newly created Virtual Directory and select the Application Identified at step 2, as App Pool for this VDIR.

5. Open the Directory Security tab and make sure only Integrated Windows Authentication is selected (disable Anonymous access if it’s enabled).

Now your tool is ready to be used. To use it:

1. On a Client Machine, open IE and navigate to our DelegConfig Application (type http://yourserver/DelegConfig )

2. The application will open but we’re not ready to read the results yet. In the address bar you will have the address: http://yourserver/DelegConfig/Default.aspx?resolvedName=

You will have to supply the FQDN of your server as value for resolvedName parameter like this: http://yourserver/DelegConfig/Default.aspx?resolvedName=yourserver.yourdomain.com . press GO.

3. Now you’re ready to check the config of your server. Below I’ll present each section.

3.1.

Here my App Pool is running as EUROPE\emilianb.

The tool even has a page that allows you to check, delete and add SPNs if the account with which you access the DelegConfig has enough privileges in AD. So clicking the Fix This button takes you to the page SetSPN.aspx:

After you click YES, you will have the possibility to check SPNs for whatever account you want or to add new SPNs. For example, here below I am viewing the SPNs for one of my machine’s account:

3.2.

I’m accessing the Application with EUROPE\emilianb. (it’s a bit confusing since it’s the same account as the identity of the app pool, but I think you get the idea).

3.3.

3.4. Clicking on the Add Backend button will allow you to also check the configuration of your backend server. You’ll have to tell it what is the server name, the service type, the port and the identity and it will add a section for your backend server. and the checklist ->

WMI related errors while connecting to SQL Server 2005/2008 Reporting Services

emilianb — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 17:52:00 GMT

Here's a quick guide describing a few checks you could make if you encounter any WMI related errors while trying to connect to your SSRS instance either with Management Studio or with the Configuration Tool.

1. The most common cause for these type of issues is missing or incorrect registry keys in the SQL Server registry hive.

Solution:

The keys to be checked are:

o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server, InstalledInstances – this has to list all installed instances and make sure there are no additional instances that were possibly removed and also no missing entries.
o HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\Instance Names – this key has subkeys for OLAP,RS and SQL which have to list correctly the installed instances
For example, on a machine with two RS instances, one 2005 and one 2008 named sql05 and sql08 we will have:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\Instance Names\RS,
Value 0
Name:            SQL05
Type:            REG_SZ
Data:            MSSQL.3

Value 1
Name:            SQL08
Type:            REG_SZ
Data:            MSRS10.SQL08

2. In some cases, after a failed or incomplete installation of a service pack, or some other situations, some WMI DLLs might not be registered correctly.

Solution:

Open a command prompt, navigate to %Windows%\System32\wbem and execute the command:

for /f %s in (‘dir /b *.dll’) do regsvr32 /s %s

This will register all the dlls in the folder.
-----------------

IF the problem still persists, in order to check that a WMI query can be done against your instance, do the following test:

Launch WBEMTEST.EXE with an account that has admin credentials on the RS machine. (Start/Run.../WBEMTEST)
Press the “Connect…” button.
Enter namespace \\{RS_MACHINE_NAME}\root\microsoft\sqlserver\reportserver
Press “Connect”
Press the “Query…” button.
Enter query “Select * from __namespace”.
Press the Apply button.
List should list all the RS instances on the remote machine. For a default instance is should be “RS_MSSQLSERVER”.
Close this dialog and press the “Connect…” button again.
Append the name from the above query to the end of the namespace and the value “\vX\admin”, ie \\rsmachine\root\microsoft\sqlserver\reportserver\rs_mssqlserver\v10\admin
Press the connect button.
Press the “Enum Classes…” button.
Press the OK button without entering anything.
There should be a list box and the last entry should say “MSReportServer_ConfigurationSetting”, double click on it.
Press the “Instances…” button.
You should get a list of instances. Choose the one that corresponds to the instance chosen in the above namespace query.
This should list properties and methods for the RS WMI provider.

To get this far, the WMI services can communicate and the user has administrative privileges on the remote machine. The test has succeeded.

Alternatively, you could use a WMI test script. A tool that could help you create the scripts is WMI Code Creator ( http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=2cc30a64-ea15-4661-8da4-55bbc145c30e&DisplayLang=en )

And to perform a full diagnosis of the WMI Service, you could use WMI Diagnosis Utility (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/topics/help/wmidiag.mspx)

Creating Subscriptions Programmatically using different Local Settings (field separators)

emilianb — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 12:30:00 GMT

If you want to create subscriptions programmatically, using the SOAP API, you would call the CreateSubscription method exposed by the API, through the proxy class created against the Web Service (ReportService.asmx; ReportService2005.asmx). However, you might have problems editing in Report Manager the subscriptions created this way, if the local settings on the client machines are not on English and the schedule of the subscription is done on Monthly recurrence with a list of days specified. Because the list separator on the client machine trying to edit the subscription is different, the deserialization of the Days list will fail with an error message similar to “The Days field contains a value that is not valid” (for example in French will be: “Le champ Days contient une valeur qui n'est pas valide.").

There is a fix already in place for this issue, however, an easy workaround that can be implemented in the mean time is to write your own class that inherits the proxy class (ReportService) which implements System.Web.Services.Protocols.SoapHttpClientProtocol and override the GetWebRequest method to accept your client machines’ language.

Example:

My proxy class against ReportService2005.asmx is ReportService2005.

My new class is RSWebService:

public class RSWebService: ReportingService2005

{

protected override WebRequest GetWebRequest( Uri uri )

{

WebRequest wr = base.GetWebRequest( uri );

WebHeaderCollection headers = ((HttpWebRequest)wr).Headers;

headers.Add("Accept-Language:fr");

return wr;

}

After that, all I have to do is use my RSWebService class to call the Reporting Services SOAP API methods instead of the ReportingService2005 class’ methods.

About integrating Reporting Services into your application (for beginners)

emilianb — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:30:00 GMT

In order to integrate Reporting Services into your Web Application you have the following options: using the Reporting Services SOAP API (consuming the Reporting Services web service), using the ReportViewer control and using URL Access (Integrating Reporting Services into Applications - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms153697(SQL.90).aspx ).

Also, a very good resource about the subject can be found here: Integrating Reporting Services into Your Application - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa964126.aspx

a) The URL Access is the simplest method because all it does is to call the report directly on the ReportViewer control installed by default on the ReportServer IIS application. The report is called from a web browser (Internet Explorer) by requesting the path to the report that is deployed on the server. This method doesn't allow us to control in any way the way the report is displayed in the ReportViewer control, because it actually uses just the browser to request the report. It's the same thing as if we would try opening in IE a connection to http://servername/ReportServer and executing a report directly there. With this option, we cannot really talk about integration. At maximum, our application could contain links to those reports we need to execute and if clicked would either start a new browser with the report requested or would open the report inside an IFrame in our web application. (Using URL Access in a Web Application - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms153563(SQL.90).aspx )

b) Consuming the web service of Reporting Services (using the SOAP API) would give you the most freedom but would also require the most amount of investment into the development of the solution. Basically, you would just call the methods exposed by the web service of Reporting Services and handle the responses in any way you choose. For example, by calling inside your application the Render method of Reporting services web service, would give you, depending on the format chosen for the Rendering (HTML, PDF, EXCEL - the format is chosen as a parameter when we call the method) the executed report that you can handle at will - you could display it inside a control, you could save it somewhere, export it, store it. You could call the methods of the SSRS web service through a proxy class, so you would have an object model available for managing reporting (Building Applications Using the Web Service and the .NET Framework - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms154699(SQL.90).aspx ).

(Using the SOAP API in a Web Application - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155376(SQL.90).aspx )

Actually, "the Reporting Services Web service is the primary interface for developing against Reporting Services. Whether you are developing code to manage your report catalog or developing code to render reports to a supported format, the Web Service exposes all the necessary methods to integrate Reporting Services into you applications. An example of one such application is Report Manager, which ships with Reporting Services; it uses the Web Service for managing the report catalog." (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms153697(SQL.90).aspx )

c) Another way of integrating Reporting Services into your web application would be using the ReportViewer control inside your ASP.NET web application. You could configure programmatically the reportViewer control to display a report of your choice or even connect to different Reporting Services instances to render different reports. For example, you could use a combination of SOAP access and ReportViewer access like this: using a proxy class to access the Web service of SSRS, you could call the ListChildren methodto obtain the reports that are on the server and display them inside a list control and then, after selecting a report for rendering, you could display it in a reportViewer control. (Integrating Reporting Services Using the ReportViewer Controls - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa337090(SQL.90).aspx )

In all these scenarios, the way Reporting Services is designed to work, involves having reports (RDL files - report definitions) deployed on the Report Server and Data Source definitions either embedded into the reports or as standalone items that can be shared by multiple reports (we could have one datasource for more reports if they use the same connection string information).

A concern with this could be that the security would have to be managed separately. This should actually not be a concern if you are using Windows Integrated Security. Through role-based security mapped to Active Directory security groups, the management of security would be quite straightforward. (Managing Permissions and Security for Reporting Services - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms156014(SQL.90).aspx )

Someone asked me once if it would be possible to deploy the report at runtime and somehow; don't have the reports previously stored on the server but just use a definition (RDL) we have at a given time to display data. The answer is yes, it is possible, but I don't think that this is a good solution because of a number of reasons. This would be possible if you take a report definition (RDL) at runtime and try to use it to render a report you would have to deploy it programmatically on the server - using the SOAP API - and render it immediately after. But this means having to perform two operations at once and therefore might run into performance issues. The second issue is that you won't get a chance to verify that the deployment was ok. Also, to deploy a report you need special permissions, more elevated permissions than those of a simple user and report browser. (http://search.live.com/results.aspx?q=deploy+reports+programatically+%22reporting+services%22&form=QBRE )

In local processing, the Reporting Services processing and rendering engine is not used at all. You don't need to have Reporting Services configured and don't need an SSRS instance at all for local report processing. All we can have in local report processing is capability to use the Report Viewer to display a set of data that is ready to be plugged into the control. Basically, information about parameters, data source, data sets, is not available at all. All we do is use the control and the Reporting Services Data Regions (Charts, Tables, Matrices) to display some data. The full Reporting Services processing and rendering engine can only be used in server processing mode. "Local processing mode provides an alternative method for viewing and rendering reports when Reporting Services is not installed. Unlike remote processing only a subset of the functionality provided by the report server is available in the control. In local mode, data processing is not handled by the control but rather implemented by the hosting application. However rendering of the report is handled by the control and processed on the client where the control is hosted. In local mode, only the PDF, Excel, and Image rendering extensions are available." (Configuring ReportViewer for Local Processing - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms251704.aspx ; Reporting Services and ReportViewer Controls in Visual Studio - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms345248(SQL.90).aspx )

Concerning Local Processing, SQL Server 2008 behaves the same way, but instead brings great improvement in server processing and rendering - (http://blogs.msdn.com/robertbruckner/archive/2008/08/11/on-demand-report-processing-in-rs-2008.aspx ; What's New in Report Processing and Rendering - http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb630400.aspx )

Unable to load the client print control after installing KB956391

emilianb — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:41:00 GMT

Recently, one of my colleagues put together a very comprehensive action plan that normally should fix this issue.

So, if you happen to have this error message while trying to print a report in Reporting Services 2005 after having recently installed the latest security patches, here is how it can be solved.

Since the main cause is that this patch updates the ActiveX controls, we will have to follow the below steps.

1. For SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services we should have at least version 9.0.3282. KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954607.

Download location: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=5148b887-f323-4adb-9721-61e1c0cfd213

2. Install separately the latest version for the ReportViewer control. Since until now we have two major versions of the control - version 8 and version 9, we should check that both are up to date.

a. for version 8 we have : http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=82833F27-081D-4B72-83EF-2836360A904D&displaylang=en - Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2005 Service Pack 1

b. for version 9 we have: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=bb196d5d-76c2-4a0e-9458-267d22b6aac6&DisplayLang=en - Microsoft Report Viewer Redistributable 2008 Service Pack 1

After the reportviewer control is updated, an IISreset should be issued in order for the changes to take effect.

3. On the client computers, have the update http://support.microsoft.com/?id=956391 installed.

HTH

Could not locate entry in sysdatabases for database X

emilianb — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 10:18:00 GMT

While upgrading a SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services instance to SP2 from SP1 or from RTM, you might encounter the following error and the upgrade fails, if your reporting Services database name is of the form XReportServer, where X is a string of characters:

"MSP Error: 29537 SQL Server Setup has encountered the following problem: [Microsoft][SQL Native Client][SQL Server]Could not locate entry in sysdatabases for database 'X'. No entry found with that name. Make sure that the name is entered correctly.. To continue, correct the problem, and then run SQL Server Setup again."

This is caused by a known issue with Reporting Services 2005 that makes so that the upgrade scripts, generated for upgrading the database, truncate the name of the database removing the ReportServer string. Therefore the scripts will reference a nonexistent database.

For now, this is only fixed in SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services, but we have the following available workarounds for SQL 2005 Reporting Services:

1. Use a different naming scheme.

2. Generate the upgrade scripts separately, manually modify them to reflect the real name of the database and execute them.

Detailed steps on how to implement the second workaround are below:

a. Make backups of your Reporting Services databases (XReportServer and XReportServerTempDb).

b. From Reporting Services Configuration Manager, make a backup of the Encryption Key.

c. From Reporting Services Configuration Manager, create a new database with a name that does not contain the words ReportServer. We will use this new database to install SP2.

d. Install SP2 for SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services.

e. After installing SP2 and restarting the server, open Reporting Services Configuration Manager and choose the Database Setup option. Here, start the Create Scripts wizard by pressing the Script ... button. Select Upgrade Database Script and put XReportServer for the "Database Name". In "Server Version" select the version that corresponds to the version of the database we're trying to upgrade (the version of the old database ) and finally choose a path to save the script that will be generated.

f. Open SQL Server Management Studio, connected to the SQL instance where the databases Reporting Services are located, and open the script that was saved at the previous step. Modify the script so that it correctly specifies the name of the database that we are trying to upgrade, as well as its temp database (XReportServer and XReportServerTempDb).

g. Execute the script.

h. Again, in Reporting Services Configuration Manager, choose "Database Setup" and connect to the SQL instance by choosing Connect. Select your database (XReportServer) and then click Apply.

i. If the instance is not initialized, the last step will be to restore the encryption key saved at step b. Normally this step should not be needed if the service accounts haven't changed.

Conditional Formatting not working in reports exported to Excel from SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services SP2

emilianb — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 12:23:00 GMT

Consider the following scenario:

You have a report deployed on a SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services SP2 instance. This report contains conditional formatting for some of the dataregions or for some cells inside a table/matrix. The format property that we want to have as a function of a certain expression is the color. So we want the coloring of the text inside a cell to depend on an expression of our choice.

If we render the report using the HTML renderer extension or the PDF, everything comes up fine and we can see different colors for our selected cell, depending on the evaluated expression we chose for the color property.

If we try exporting the report to Excel format however, the cells completely disregard the conditional formatting (conditional coloring in our case) and show the same color. This happens because the processing path for the Excel rendering extension makes so that the color property evaluated together with the background color and therefore if the background color is a constant, the color will expression will not be evaluated.

To work around this we only need to make the Backround color be an expression instead of a constant. We can do this by simply specifying << ="Color" >> on the value of the BackgroundColor property instead of <<Color>>.

Developer Tools in Internet Explorer 8

emilianb — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 09:56:00 GMT

As you probably heard, IE8 introduces the Developer Tools. Lots of great features like live HTML and CSS editing, JScript debugging and profiler, HTML, CSS validators.

More information: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2008/09/03/developer-tools-in-internet-explorer-8-beta-2.aspx

But also:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848894(VS.85).aspx - Discovering the Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848892(VS.85).aspx - Developer Tools: Script Debugging Overview

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848893(VS.85).aspx - Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools GUI Reference

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848895(VS.85).aspx - Developer Tools: Script Profiler Overview

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc848896(VS.85).aspx - Developer Tools: Keyboard Shortcuts

Currently in Beta 2, the build can be downloaded and tested from: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/worldwide-sites.aspx.

SQL Server Agent cannot be started after adding an "Alias Local Host Server"

emilianb — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:58:00 GMT

We might find ourselves in the following scenario: for a SQL Server 2005 edition, you accidentaly specify a wrong "Alias Local Host Server" in Management Studio. Now, what happens is that, when the SQL Server Agent starts, it tries to connect to this ALIAS and if the connection fails, the service doesn't start. What we see in the SQL Server Agent Logs can be similar to:

"2008-08-22 17:02:11 - ! [298] SQLServer Error: 53, Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [53]. [SQLSTATE 08001]
2008-08-22 17:02:11 - ! [165] ODBC Error: 0, Login timeout expired [SQLSTATE HYT00]
2008-08-22 17:02:12 - ! [298] SQLServer Error: 53, An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. [SQLSTATE 08001]
2008-08-22 17:02:12 - ! [000] Unable to connect to server 'test'; SQLServerAgent cannot start
2008-08-22 17:03:08 - ! [298] SQLServer Error: 53, Named Pipes Provider: Could not open a connection to SQL Server [53]. [SQLSTATE 08001]
2008-08-22 17:03:08 - ! [165] ODBC Error: 0, Login timeout expired [SQLSTATE HYT00]
2008-08-22 17:03:08 - ! [298] SQLServer Error: 53, An error has occurred while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005, this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections. [SQLSTATE 08001]
2008-08-22 17:03:08 - ! [382] Logon to server 'test' failed (DisableAgentXPs)
2008-08-22 17:03:09 - ? [098] SQLServerAgent terminated (normally)" *

* Here, my alias was called test.

We have at least two ways out of this one.

1. We can create a valid alias with this name.

2. We can modify the "Alias Local Host Server" property. The only problem is that since the SQL Server Agent doesn't start, we cannot open the Properties window for it in Management Studio and therefore cannot alter the settings. So, here is the Registry Key that corresponds to this property:

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\SQLServerAgent\ServerHost