Robert Bruckner's Advanced Reporting Services Blog : RDL

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 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.

Subreport Usage

Robert M. Bruckner — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 17:40:00 GMT

In a previous post I showed how to quickly find reports that use custom report items (CRIs). The same idea can be applied to subreports as well. As an administrator of a report server, you may access the catalog database directly. Keep in mind that any queries you execute directly against the report server’s catalog database may affect the performance of the overall system. Make sure that you never take any locks on objects in that database, as this is not supported and interferes with the function of the report server.

The query below runs against the current version of the report server catalog database, and may not necessarily work for future RS versions. It uses XQuery and checks for all three different RDL namespaces since the catalog database stores a copy of the original report in exactly the format it was originally uploaded, so that (maybe several years) later, you can still retrieve exactly the report you published as a 2003/10 or 2005/01 report, even if it is internally on-the-fly upgraded to the latest schema version of the report server it is running on.

Use the following query to get a list of reports that reference subreports, including the path of those subreports:

USE ReportServer

/* declare and populate temp table */
DECLARE @tab TABLE (Path NVARCHAR(MAX), xmlColumn XML)
INSERT @tab
SELECT top 1500 Path, CONVERT(XML, CONVERT(VARBINARY(MAX), Content)) FROM Catalog WHERE Type=2;

/* find subreports in RS 2000-based main reports */
WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2003/10/reportdefinition' as rdl)
SELECT Path as ReportPath,
n.x.value('(//rdl:ReportName)[1]', 'nvarchar(256)') as ReferencedReport
FROM @tab
CROSS APPLY xmlColumn.nodes('//rdl:Subreport') n(x);

/* find subreports in RS 2005-based main reports */
WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2005/01/reportdefinition' as rdl)
SELECT Path as ReportPath,
n.x.value('(//rdl:ReportName)[1]', 'nvarchar(256)') as ReferencedReport
FROM @tab
CROSS APPLY xmlColumn.nodes('//rdl:Subreport') n(x);

/* find subreports in RS 2008-based main reports */
WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2008/01/reportdefinition' as rdl)
SELECT Path as ReportPath,
n.x.value('(//rdl:ReportName)[1]', 'nvarchar(256)') as ReferencedReport
FROM @tab
CROSS APPLY xmlColumn.nodes('//rdl:Subreport') n(x);

Report Surfer

Robert M. Bruckner — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:50:00 GMT

I wanted to give some props to MVP Grant Paisley who has setup a site called Report Surfer, where you can directly view, share, and download sample Reporting Services reports.

I met Grant a few months back when he visited Redmond. He was very interested in reports I had built for the RS 2005 chart whitepaper, as well as example reports from my recent blog postings. They are now also available in the report library.

The Report Surfer site runs RS 2008 and thereby supports old and new reports. One very nice aspect is that the current library of reports also includes our previously released “report packs”, which you can view directly on the site without the need to install anything. A free registration is required to use the site for uploading, sharing, and downloading reports.

Better Report Viewing in Visual Studio 2010

Robert M. Bruckner — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 09:20:00 GMT

We plan to release significantly updated and improved versions of both the Winforms and ASP.NET Report Viewer controls in Visual Studio 2010. This is going to include the long awaited local mode support for the new report processing engine, originally released with SQL Server Reporting Services 2008. Most importantly, this provides RDL 2008 features (e.g. tablix, enhanced charts, gauge, rich text) in local mode without connection to a report server. Furthermore, a number of other new features are coming as well in the Report Viewer controls. Related to this, my esteemed colleague Brian Hartman started blogging recently. His blog is definitely worth keeping an eye on regarding common questions on current and future versions of the Report Viewer.

FAQ: What is the current level of RDL support in Visual Studio 2008 Report Viewer controls?

If you are using local mode, you probably already noticed that attempting to load RDL 2008 based reports results in the following error:

The report definition is not valid.
Details: The report definition has an invalid target namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2008/01/reportdefinition' which cannot be upgraded.

You cannot use RDL 2008 features in VS 2005 or VS 2008 report viewer controls in local mode, because the controls are using the same report processing engine that was shipped with SQL Server 2005 (supporting only the RDL 2005 namespace and feature set). As a side-note, VS 2008 shipped almost 6 months before SQL Server 2008 became available.

If you want to use RDL 2008 features with the report viewer controls available today, server mode is your only viable option, because report processing is performed remotely on a Reporting Services 2008 server. Please check Brian's blog posting about RS 2008 and the Report Viewer controls for more details. A general overview of the differences in functionality between Report Viewer and RS 2008 is available in the documentation as well.

What Kind of Reports are Published / Which Use Custom Report Items?

Robert M. Bruckner — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 10:15:00 GMT

As an administrator of a report server, you may occasionally ask yourself the question of what kind of reports are published in terms of their particular feature usage. For example:

· Usage of Custom Report Items (CRIs)
You plan to upgrade from RS 2005 to RS 2008 and there are CRI controls installed on your current RS 2005 server (look for a <ReportItems> section in rsReportServer.config)? You may want to know whether they are actually referenced in any currently published reports on the server, because you may have read this related blog posting and are wondering if you need to install the 2005-based CRI controls on your RS 2008 server?

· Usage of subreports
Which reports use subreports? Not only is this interesting for dependency tracking, but it might also be relevant for optimizing performance.

· Usage of custom assemblies
What kind of (custom) assemblies are referenced by published reports? This might be interesting information for auditing, or for trouble-shooting the security policy configuration of a report server.

Offline Solutions

Well, as always there are multiple ways to accomplish this.

One option is to download all the reports from the server in an automated way and then analyze the RDL contents. This can be accomplished similar to the RS Explorer sample application, via the Reporting Services SOAP API, and using ListChildren and GetReportDefinition. Alternatively, you could utilize RS Scripter, a great tool written by Jasper Smith, to script/download all reports. For the subsequent offline analysis in the file system use full text search tools (e.g. findstr).

Basic SQL Query Solutions

As an administrator of a report server, you may access the catalog database directly. Keep in mind that any queries you execute directly against the report server’s catalog database may affect the performance of the overall system. Make sure that you never take any locks on objects in that database, as this is not supported and interferes with the function of the report server. That said, if you are familiar with the RDL XSD structure, you can write a simple query like the following to find all reports that reference subreports:

USE ReportServer

SELECT Path, Name, Description, *

FROM Catalog

WHERE Type = 2 AND

CONVERT(VARCHAR(MAX),CONVERT(VARBINARY(MAX),Content)) LIKE '%<Subreport%'

SQL XQuery Solutions

Let's now focus on a slightly more complex scenario: you want to determine which types of CRIs are used by which reports on your server.

Note that the RDLs stored in the report server are exactly the RDL files that were originally uploaded. Since the CRI feature was introduced with the RDL 2005/01 namespace, we only need to query that particular namespace to find reports that reference 2005 CRIs. If however you are looking for subreports or other elements, you may have to query several namespaces: RDL 2003/10, RDL 2005/01, and RDL 2008/01. Btw, my esteemed colleague John Gallardo used to work a lot with XQuery before joining the Reporting Services team and helped crafting the initial query, which I further refined to this:

USE ReportServer

/* declare and populate temp table */

DECLARE @tab TABLE (Path NVARCHAR(MAX), xmlColumn XML)

INSERT @tab

SELECT Path, CONVERT(XML, CONVERT(VARBINARY(MAX), Content)) FROM Catalog WHERE Type=2;

/* for all CustomReportItem elements, display the report path, CRI type and name */

WITH XMLNAMESPACES ('http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2005/01/reportdefinition' as rdl)

SELECT Path as ReportPath,

n.x.value('@Name', 'nvarchar(256)') as CRIName,

n.x.value('(//rdl:Type)[1]', 'nvarchar(256)') as CRIType

FROM @tab

CROSS APPLY xmlColumn.nodes('//rdl:CustomReportItem') n(x)

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!

RDL 2008 Specification

Robert M. Bruckner — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:15:00 GMT

Our documentation team made the latest RDL specification available on the Reporting Services site: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/reporting.aspx

The 2008 RDL specification is available as XPS and as PDF document. Older versions of the RDL specifications are still available: 2005/01 and 2003/10.

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.

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.

Fields in Page Header

Robert M. Bruckner — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 06:45:00 GMT

One of the small new features in Reporting Services 2008 that has not been widely publicized, is the ability to directly reference dataset fields and dataset aggregations from expressions in the page header and page footer. You can accomplish this by simply dragging a dataset field directly into the page header/footer area of the report, or by manually writing expressions.

The attachment at the bottom of this posting contains a small report that demonstrates several techniques combined to render a customer directory of the fictional Northwind Traders company, based on the Northwind sample database (database download link). A partial screenshot of the first page of the report is shown below:

Please note the following areas of the customer directory report:

Field reference / dataset aggregate calculation in page header
The page header contains information about the number of countries that Northwind Traders has customers. This information is calculated at runtime directly from the customer dataset by using a placeholder in the page header textbox with the following expression:
=CountDistinct(Fields!Country.Value, "Customers")
Reportitem references in the page header to show the first and last country covered on the current page
For multi-page reports, such as the customer directory listing you may want to include text from the body of the report in the header. In our particular example, we want to show the first and the last country covered on a particular page of the customer directory. To do this, you would include an expression using the First function in a text box in the page header. To display the first occurrence of the Country value on the page, the expression would resemble the following:
=First(ReportItems!Country.Value)
Likewise, use an expression with the Last function to provide the last value of the Country text box on the page:
=Last(ReportItems!Country.Value)
Repeating table header and (country) group header on every page
This is accomplished by applying steps discussed in a previous posting.
Fixed table header
The table header is always visible on top of every page when browsing the report interactively. This is accomplished by applying steps discussed in a previous posting.

In addition, the report shows a few of the abilities of the enhanced (Rich)Textbox in Reporting Services 2008, that enables using multiple fonts, styles, colors, paragraphs, etc. within the same textbox. It also uses a "stepped" layout for the table country/city groups, that can be easily accomplished through the new table wizard in Report Builder 2.0, or created with a few manual steps as well.

As a side-note, for using fields in page header or footer in Reporting Services 2005, please read this older posting on Brian Welcker's blog.

What DataSet Query Text Is Executed?

Robert M. Bruckner — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 22:15:00 GMT

In a previous posting, I discussed dataset execution order in Reporting Services. In this posting, I will provide a few tips for situations where you or your report users are wondering what is the actual query executed by Reporting Services.

While you can accurately answer this question using a profiler connected to the data source machines or in some cases by opening the dataset properties dialog, there are other options directly available from within reports. You will probably encounter the following main situations:

Parameterized or regular datasets
In order to see the underlying query command text in the report, add a textbox with the following RDL expression, utilizing the built-in DataSets collection and the CommandText property. This can be particularly useful when you use an expression-based query command text, as the CommandText property will contain the evaluated expression result.
=DataSets!DataSetName.CommandText

If you use report parameters bound to query parameters in your dataset, you can display those values by accessing the built-in Parameters collection. For example, assuming P1 is a multi-valued report parameter, we utilize the Join function to show the current parameter values as comma-separated list:
="P1's values: " & Join(Parameters!P1.Value, ", ")
Report Model based datasets
Using Report Builder 2.0 with a shared data source on your report server that points to an existing report model is a very powerful combination. It enables users to create quite complex queries easily that would be rather difficult to write as actual SQL or MDX queries. Similar to above, you can use the RewrittenCommandText property to get the model-based query with parameter values rewritten as literals:
=DataSets!DataSetName.RewrittenCommandText

You can make this more sophisticated by only dynamically showing the query text in the report, e.g. based on a parameter or by toggling the visibility using another textbox:

More information about all built-in global collections accessible from RDL expressions is available in SQL Server Books On Line. Note that some of the server related properties don't have values in local preview, only when connected to a server in Report Builder 1.0 / 2.0 or running directly on a server.

The CommandText property value always represents the original command text as defined in the RDL dataset. The RewrittenCommandText property value is populated at runtime from data extensions that support the IDbCommandRewriter interface. This interface allows Reporting Services to read the CommandText back from the data extension after it has merged the original command text and parameter values. If a data extension doesn't support this interface, RewrittenCommandText will be null/Nothing. Currently the built-in report model data source supports this interface, although it could also be implemented by any custom data extension.

Using Analysis Services Parent-Child Hierarchies in Reports

Robert M. Bruckner — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:45:00 GMT

One of the questions that I answer somewhat frequently, is about recursive groupings in Reporting Services and how to utilize parent-child hierarchies from an Analysis Services cube.

The attachment of this posting contains a small report example I put together based on the Analysis Services 2005 Adventure Works DW sample cube, and demonstrates a recursive hierarchy using the employee dimension. It works both in Reporting Services 2005 and 2008. Partial screenshot of the attached sample report output:

Particular areas to note / steps:

The table group is defined as a recursive grouping based on the UniqueName and ParentUniqueName property values from the Analysis Services parent-child hierarchy. Consequently, there is only one group defined at design time, that automatically expands recursively at runtime based on the parent-child hierarchy in the cube.
Group expression: =Fields!Employees.UniqueName
Parent group expression: =Fields!Employees.ParentUniqueName
Group visibility is toggled by the textbox within the group, to enable automatic drilldown along the parent-child hierarchy.
In the example, manager names in the employee hierarchy (i.e. they have at least one employee reporting to them) are shown in bold font. This is accomplished with a count aggregate function that takes into account the full recursive hierarchy of all children by explicitly specifying the Recursive keyword as third argument. The textbox FontStyle property is set to the following RDL expression:
=iif(Count(Fields!Employees.Value, "table1_Details_Group", Recursive) > 1, "Bold", "Normal")
The textbox showing the employee name uses dynamic left padding (in RS 2008 paragraph indents can be used as well) based on the current recursive hierarchy level using the Level() function.
For example: =20 * Level() & "pt"

Recursive hierarchies can also be very useful for relational data sources, not just parent-child hierarchies in cubes. I hope the explanations in this posting and the attached sample report resolve some of the mystery around parent-child / recursive hierarchies, and using regular vs. recursive aggregate functions. Enjoy!