Robert Bruckner's Advanced Reporting Services Blog : Data Visualization

SQL Server 2008 R2 November CTP – What’s New In Reporting Services?

Robert M. Bruckner — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 07:30:00 GMT

The November CTP download is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The public download is available here.

The feature pack download is now also available and includes Report Builder 3.0 as well as the RS add-ins for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

The Data Platform Insider blog provides an overview of what's new in CTP release for SQL Server 2008 R2. If you are reading my blog, you are probably interested in knowing what’s specifically new compared to the previous August CTP in Reporting Services 2008 R2 November CTP:

Report Part Gallery
The ability for report items / data regions to be published to the report server and made available to other report authors to re-use. Report authors can publish and share these report components from either BIDS or Report Builder 3.0. Information workers can use Report Builder to mash these report components together into their own unique views by simple drag & drop. This includes notifications when a report part was updated on the report server in the meantime.
Shared Data Sets
Datasets can now be shared, stored, processed and cached externally from the report. Cache refresh plans let you cache reports or shared dataset query results on first use or from a schedule.
Enhanced SharePoint Integration for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010
This includes support for multiple SharePoint Zones, the SharePoint Universal Logging service, and Report Parts. We added a new SharePoint List data extension with query designer support. Furthermore, support for right-to-left text with Arabic and Hebrew was added in the SharePoint user interface.
New Data Visualization Report Items
Data Bars - each bar is scaled based on the maximum value of the immediate group (a default which can be adjusted).
Sparklines are data-intense, word-sized graphics. These visualizations make it possible for report consumers to quickly see things like trends over time at a glance.
Indicators are small icons that are often used to depict the status or trend for a given value. Setting up indicators based on a number of pre-configured sets is now very easy.
Furthermore, this CTP includes improvements to the Map wizard.
Enhanced Business Intelligence Development Studio
Support for 2008 and 2008 R2 versions of reports and report projects.
Aggregates of Aggregates
This enables report authors to nest RDL aggregate expressions inside other RDL aggregate expressions with unlimited nesting levels. For example, the expression =Avg(Sum(Sales, "Month"), "Year") would compute the average total monthly sales.
Other RDL Expression Language enhancements
Expect more details on many of these topics in separate blog postings:
- Writing expressions that take into account the current rendering format (=Globals!RenderFormat.Name)
- Naming pages, including naming of Excel worksheets for Excel export
- Group.DomainScope is quite useful for synchronizing data visually across different charts / sparklines and in tablix even if data is only available at disparate granularities.
- Read/Write report variables with automatic serialization/persistence; these are quite useful to avoid managing your own custom code variables.
- Rotating Text 270 Degrees, which is frequently needed for narrow column layouts.
- Dynamic page breaks, as well as resetting page number of page breaks
New 2010 SOAP Endpoint
While the existing 2005/2006 SOAP endpoints are still supported, the 2010 endpoint unifies support of both native & SharePoint integrated servers and adds functionality for new areas such as shared datasets, cache refresh plans, and report parts.
Improved Browser and Standards Mode Support

During the next weeks I plan to cover a lot more details regarding the areas listed above.

Enjoy!

I look forward to hearing your feedback on Reporting Services 2008 R2 November CTP in the dedicated MSDN discussion forum.

RS Maps with ESRI Shapefile

Robert M. Bruckner — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:40:00 GMT

In a previous post, I demonstrated how to use a SQL Server spatial query as source for geospatial visualizations. ESRI Shapefile is another type of spatial data supported in Reporting Services Maps in SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP.

There are a number of free ESRI shapefile data sources available for download on the web, which you can use to create your own maps of. Popular shapefile sources include:

US Census Bureau web site: TIGER/Line project
Global Administrative Areas spatial database at: http://biogeo.berkeley.edu/gadm/
Digital Chart of the World Data Server at: http://www.maproom.psu.edu/dcw/

As pointed out by my colleague Yi in this related MSDN forum thread, please note that in August CTP the Map wizard does not yet automatically detect the coordinate system used in an ESRI shapefile. So if the wizard doesn’t show any shape data, finish the wizard, and then on the design surface select the map, open the viewport property dialog from the context menu, and try changing the coordinate system to ‘Planar’.

RS Maps with Spatial Data and Bing Maps

Robert M. Bruckner — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 09:25:00 GMT

SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP includes map visualization functionality in Reporting Services, as briefly described yesterday. In this posting, I’m going to provide an introduction of how to use spatial data and Bing Maps with Reporting Services Maps.

The attachment of this posting includes the final report so you can try it out yourself in Report Builder 3.0. The data source for the report is the Person.Address table in the AdventureWorks2008 sample database (download) which includes a geospatial column.

The report scenario is about showing the addresses of all your customers in the Los Angeles area. Accomplishing this requires just a few steps in Report Builder 3.0, and you don’t even need to write a single RDL expression! Btw, I will cover some of the new interesting spatial functions added to the RDL expression language in another posting.

Let’s start with the screenshot of the final map visualization of this report:

Steps:

Start Report Builder 3.0, and create a data source connection to the AdventureWorks2008 sample database (download).
Define a new dataset which includes geospatial data. For example:
SELECT [AddressID], [AddressLine1], [AddressLine2], [City],
[StateProvinceID], [PostalCode], [SpatialLocation]
FROM [AdventureWorks2008].[Person].[Address]
WHERE [City] = 'Los Angeles'
From the Report Builder 3.0 toolbar, insert a new map, using the map wizard. On the first page of the wizard, select to use a SQL Server spatial query.
On the second page of the wizard, select the dataset defined in step 2 (“Customers”).
When going to the third page of the wizard, you will notice that it automatically detected that the “SpatialLocation” column contains geospatial data and the wizard displays a cloud of points. Simply select “Add a Bing Maps background for this map view” and you will get to see a backdrop for the cloud of points of the Los Angeles area – this is because the map wizard analyzes the rows contained in the dataset and their geospatial location.
Since our specific dataset doesn’t contain further information about the customers, we select a basic marker map as visualization. If we had further data in our dataset, such as total sales amount, we could do a bubble map taking into account revenue.
In the final step of the map wizard we can chose to the marker type and display labels with each point. Note that all these settings can also be made / changed later through the map property dialogs, as well as the property grid in Report Builder. The map wizard is usually the quickest way to get started though.
We should now have a map on the design surface. You can further tweak settings of each map layer and map properties as desired.

Of course, you can do a lot more with Map and the geospatial data integration in the RDL expression language – I’ll cover this in upcoming postings.

SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP – What’s New In Reporting Services?

Robert M. Bruckner — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 09:59:00 GMT

The August CTP download is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The public download is now also active here.

The Data Platform Insider blog provides an overview of what's new in this first public CTP release for SQL Server 2008 R2. If you are reading my blog, you are probably interested in knowing what’s new in Reporting Services 2008 R2, and already in August CTP:

Map and spatial data visualization
We provided sneak previews of this functionality at past conferences, including a popular “BI Power Hour” demo. Maps can be very powerful visualizations. They can consume and visualize geospatial and geometry data directly (as shown by Ed Katibah here), “regular” data, and combine multiple datasets using map layers. Maps can integrate ESRI shape files, as well as directly integrate with Bing Maps. More details in upcoming postings.
Report Builder 3.0
The most notable new Report Builder feature area already available in the August CTP is the so-called "server mode":
- An edit session concept enables support for embedded data source credentials, relative references, and subreport references when connected to a report server.
- Dataset results are cached when connected to a report server, which speeds up making layout changes and previewing the new report.
ATOM data feeds
Reports are now also available in the ATOM standard compliant format that can be consumed by Gemini and other tools.
Update: Teo Lachev takes an initial look at data feeds here.
AJAX Report Viewer
The August CTP provides a preview of some of the functionality that will be available in the stand-alone report viewer control with the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release. You will notice a more fluid navigation experience in August CTP.
Report Manager
Report Manager received visual and functional improvements with SharePoint-like interaction and menus.
Update: Teo Lachev provides his take on report manager with screenshots here.
RDL Expression Language enhancements
We added direct geospatial data & function support, as well as three types of Lookup functions (Lookup, LookupSet, MultiLookup). More about this in upcoming postings.

On top of that, there are several more new Reporting Services and RDL features available in August CTP, including a few in combination with Gemini and SharePoint in a limited CTP program only. During the next weeks and months I plan to cover more details on the major areas listed above, and perhaps some of the other additions like report sections.

Enjoy!

I look forward to hearing your feedback on Reporting Services 2008 R2 August CTP in the dedicated new MSDN discussion forum.

Multi-Player Gaming in RS (aka BI Power Hour 2008)

Robert M. Bruckner — Thu, 21 May 2009 04:25:00 GMT

At the traditional annual “BI Power Hour” sessions, several teams that contribute to the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform show off their technology in a fun way. It is about demonstrating, in perhaps unusual ways, of how business intelligence and various tools of the BI stack can be useful.

In past years, Reporting Services made a number of successful contributions to these events, such as Hangman, report manager as report, etch-a-sketch, mastermind, an executive dashboard (aka tic-tac-toe), and others.

Throughout last year, we showed several variations of a multi-player game that we shall call “Sea Battle”. The goal of the game is to sink all of your opponent ships (for example, a Battleship), before the opponent has a chance to find and sink your ships. The faster you click, the better your chances of winning :)

The overall theme of the report was about interesting new data visualization features in Reporting Services 2008. It uses charts with dynamic drill through actions, as well as data point tooltips. Furthermore, a small matrix acts essentially as a data-driven grid control next to the chart to show your own ship positions and the opponent’s hits and misses. The overall health status of the opponent's ships is shown using a gauge control with a custom pointer with an image to simulate a rising water level, as a ship sustains more and more hits.

Successfully sinking a ship is rewarded with a nice animated explosion. The really fun part is the multi-player aspect – we use a basic way of matching up two report users so they can play against each other by simply interacting with their report on a report server.

While Reporting Services was clearly not designed as a gaming platform, this demonstration of the product's flexibility brought out the competitive spirit in the SQL Server BI team. When I made an initial version available for limited beta-testing on an internal report server, the news spread quickly and we immediately had more than 50 people playing, and frantically clicking on the chart’s drill through links trying to win against their human opponents. This created quite a bit of load on the report server that is also used by hundreds of other users, and provided a nice stress test scenario :)

Enough said. I know you want to participate in the fun and play yourself!

Instructions to setup the demo on your own RS 2008 report server:

Unzip the attachment
Restore the database backup (SeaBattle.bak) on a SQL Server database server
Create a new Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008 report project, add the shared data source (SeaBattle.rds), and the two reports of the zip file to the project
Publish the project to a RS 2008 report server
Use stored credentials on the shared data source.
I strongly recommend using stored credentials. That way, only the stored user needs access to the SeaBattle database and you won’t run into any potential integrated security double-hop issues.
In report manager, hide the “SeaBattle” report, so that users just see the “SeaBattle – Start new game” report. Don’t run the SeaBattle report directly; always use the start new game report.
I recommend playing the game using the http://MachineName/reportserver URL, not through report manager, if you want faster response time and better chances of winning :)
Better yet, you could quickly build a small Winforms application, using the Visual Studio 2008 ReportViewer control in remote mode and connect to the report server.

Hope you are going to enjoy this Power Hour demo!

Q&A and disclaimers:

Multi-player matching is really basic
The first user that starts the report establishes a new game, the second user that enters is automatically linked with the first user. Since there is no concept of game session implemented, you can end up with abandoned sessions if one of the players stops playing, or starts a new game.
Reporting Services was not designed as a gaming platform
This results in some limitations in the game design. Furthermore, the demo evolved over time with little bits added here and there – if I were to rebuild the backend database and the report from scratch, it would have a somewhat cleaner design.
Could this be built using a local mode report viewer control?
Yes, but it is probably an exercise for more advanced developers. Basically, you would build a local mode report viewer application with its own data retrieval, and just access the SeaBattle database on a common SQL Server.

Dynamic Drilldown in Reports and Charts

Robert M. Bruckner — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 21:15:00 GMT

Just a quick post to reference two interesting reads about designing dynamic drilldown in reports:

Sean Boon blogged about an approach to implement drilldown on charts with Reporting Services when Analysis Services is used as the data source.
Chris Webb then created a great blog posting on how to implement drilldown for Analysis Services based reports in general.

Enjoy!

The Ultimate Guide to Color Scales / Conditional Formatting

Robert M. Bruckner — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:35:00 GMT

I recently provided a tip to my Australian colleague David Lean to successfully solve a small report design challenge with tables and charts that use conditional formatting.

The specific goal was to dynamically calculate and assign a color shade so that the minimum value present in the data is shown red, the average value yellow, and the maximum value green, with automatically calculated red-yellow-green shades for numeric values in between.

As it turns out, Dave integrated and expanded this into a great four part blog post series on using conditional formatting and color scales in Reporting Services (applicable to both, RS 2005 and RS 2008):

Enjoy!

Custom Report Item

Robert M. Bruckner — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:55:00 GMT

Custom Report Item in Reporting Services 2005

This server extensibility feature introduced in Reporting Services 2005 (RS 2005) provides the ability to develop custom report items for embedding in reports. Examples of resources available that provide insights into how one can build custom report item solutions include: documentation overview, sample, and a great MSDN magazine article by Teo Lachev.

Over time, several independent partners utilized this extensibility mechanism and developed nice 2005-based Custom Report Item (CRI) controls, such as Dundas Visualization Products for Reporting Services, various barcode controls, and even some that take RTF and draw it as image into reports.

Custom Report Item in Reporting Services 2008

RS 2008 introduces a new RenderingObjectModel and an on-demand paradigm for processing and rendering reports. Consequently, also the CRI runtime control interfaces and how the control interacts with the new on-demand RenderingObjectModel have changed. An updated CRI-Polygon sample is available for RS 2008.

Using 2005-based Custom Report Items in Reporting Services 2008

I have seen two common questions regarding the support of 2005 CRIs in RS 2008:

Q: What if you bought or developed a 2005-based CRI runtime control - can you run those old reports after upgrading your report server to RS 2008?

A: Yes, running 2005-based CRI runtime controls on a RS 2008 server is supported. Your old 2005-based reports will run on RS 2008 without modifications - however make sure to verify that the Web.config of your 2008 report server contains an assembly binding redirect for the Microsoft.ReportingServices.Interfaces.dll as specified in KB 955795.

Q: What about 2005-based CRI design time controls?

A: 2005-based CRI design time controls work with Business Intelligence Development Studio 2005 (BIDS 2005) only. You can continue to design reports with BIDS 2005 and deploy directly to your RS 2008 server with the 2005-based CRI runtime control installed.
For BIDS 2008 however, the CRI integration interfaces have changed, and you will need 2008-based CRI design controls to develop reports utilizing the full 2008 feature set (e.g. tablix) and 2008-based CRIs.

Additional information about upgrading a report with custom report items is provided in the documentation.

Special Case: Deploying 2005 Reports utilizing Dundas CRI controls to a RS 2008 Server

In short, your existing reports will run on RS 2008 without modifications. You may no longer need your 2005 CRI controls on the RS 2008 server in particular cases, as explained below.

With the acquisition of the data visualization products of Dundas Inc., reports utilizing 2005-based CRI controls from Dundas generally will be automatically upgraded on-the-fly into native 2008 charts and gauges in RS 2008. In that case, your old reports will run as native 2008 reports when deployed to a RS 2008 server.

If your 2005-based reports with Dundas CRIs utilize certain features, such as annotations or custom code, the reports won't be automatically converted into native RS 2008 charts/gauges, but instead remain 2005 reports that are executed in a transparent backwards-compatibility mode¹ of the processing engine in the RS 2008 server. In that case, or if you use the Dundas Maps or Dundas Calendar products, the reports will automatically run on the RS 2008 server, but you still need your 2005-based Dundas CRI runtime controls installed on the server.

Alternatively, Dundas is releasing several new 2008-based CRI design and runtime controls. You could upgrade your existing 2005 reports in BIDS (with the 2008 Dundas controls installed) to 2008 reports, utilize all the new 2008 features such as tablix, and then deploy them as 2008 RDLs to a RS 2008 server. Please contact Dundas directly, if you are interested in that option.

¹The related posting about the enhanced ExecutionLog2 in RS 2008 explains, among other topics, how an administrator can utilize the AdditionalInfo.ProcessingEngine value to determine whether an old report automatically upgraded to 2008, or if the report contains a 2005-based CRI and therefore is running in the transparent backwards-compatibility mode of the processing engine.

Happy New Year!

Trendlines (Calculated Series) in Reporting Services Charts

Robert M. Bruckner — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 07:00:00 GMT

One of the new chart features in Reporting Services 2008 is the ability to add chart series calculated from another series. This is accomplished by right-clicking an existing series (data point value) and selecting "Add Calculated Series ..." from the popup menu.

You can choose from a variety of pre-defined and parameterized formulas for the derived chart series. This includes Bollinger bands, several types of moving average calculations, detrended price osciallator, mean, median, relative strength index, MACD, TRIX, and more. The attachment of this posting contains a small report (data are included in the report) that shows a simple moving average price trend line. The rendered chart is shown below.

All Things Data Visualization (Sparkline Reports, Silverlight Charts)

Robert M. Bruckner — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 07:30:00 GMT

My colleagues Sean Boon and Alex Gorev recently started their own blogs with focus on data visualization. You can expect to see more postings on their blogs in future on how to effectively utilize Reporting Services 2008 charts and gauges to make your reports really stand out.

Sean started his blog with a great initial posting on how to build sparkline reports in Reporting Services 2008 using just a few steps. This was followed by the Microsoft Chart controls announcement, shipped for .NET 3.5 recently. Furthermore, the Silverlight Toolkit was announced at PDC today, which includes new Silverlight Chart controls with contributions by the Reporting Services data visualization group as well.

Charts with Dynamic Height or Width based on Categories/Data

Robert M. Bruckner — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 06:45:00 GMT

You may have been in this situation before - you designed a chart based on a particular dataset and everything looks great. However, later the data volume increases, or new categories dynamically show up in your data source, and there is not enough horizontal/vertical space in the chart to show all the data or categories. Unless, of course, you applied an approach to dynamically increase the height/width of the chart.

There are two new Chart RDL properties in the report designer / report builder property grid to simplify this task in Reporting Services 2008:

DynamicHeight: the height the chart should grow/shrink at runtime
DynamicWidth: the width the chart should grow/shrink at runtime

If the properties are not specified, then the design time sizes will be applied. Both properties can be set to any RDL expression that evaluates to a size string at runtime (e.g. ="3 in"). Btw, note the space in the size string between the numeric part and the size unit.

The attachment of this posting contains a small report that demonstrates this technique. The report is based on the Northwind sample database (database download link). The chart in the report dynamically increases its width based on the number of countries shown in the chart (determined by a report parameter value). To accomplish this, the DynamicWidth property of the chart is set to the following expression:

=(1 + Parameters!TopNCountries.Value / 2) & " in"

In this example, if you choose to show only the top 5 countries, the chart will have a width of 1+5/2 = 3.5 inches. If you select the top 10 countries, the chart has a width of 1+10/2 = 6 inches and therefore more horizontal room to draw additional categories.

Microsoft Chart Controls for .NET Framework 3.5 Released!

Robert M. Bruckner — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 05:10:00 GMT

One of the projects the data visualization group within the Reporting Services team has been working on is building stand-alone ASP.NET and Windows Forms Chart Controls for the .NET Framework 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008, similar to what has been already available as built-in chart functionality in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008.

These stand-alone chart controls can be easily integrated into your existing applications and have a very rich API. We are excited that they are now available on Microsoft Download Center! Congratulations to our data visualization group! To get a quick overview of a subset of the available chart types in the stand-alone controls, take a look at the image below:

Important download links:

Microsoft Chart Controls for Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
This installs the ASP.NET and Windows Forms Controls. The assemblies will be installed in the GAC as well as in the "%Program File%\Microsoft Chart Controls\Assemblies" folder. If you build an application using the controls, your setup and deployment should add MSChart.exe installer as a pre-requisite.
Language Pack for Microsoft Chart Controls
This installs the language pack for the Chart Controls. It is available in 23 .NET Framework languages.
Microsoft Chart Controls Add-on for Visual Studio 2008
This installs the IntelliSense file in English for the controls and also adds the controls to the toolbox for ASP.NET and Windows Forms.
Documentation for Microsoft Chart Controls

Samples to get your development started are available on MSDN (http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/mschart). Furthermore, if you have questions or suggestions, or just want to share your excitement, please visit our newly created MSDN forum for Windows Forms and ASP.NET Chart Controls.

Enjoy!