SQL Server Reporting Services Team Blog

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

2009-11-10T07:55:00Z

[Cross-posting from my own blog]

The November CTP download is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The public download is available here. A small stand-alone MSI for Report Builder 3.0, November CTP, is now available for download here. The feature pack download is 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 this 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
- 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

Enjoy!

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

Report Builder 3.0, August CTP

2009-08-14T19:20:00Z

A small stand-alone MSI for Report Builder 3.0, August CTP, is now available for download here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=160384

Download packages for SQL Server 2008 R2 August CTP are available here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e19689bd-38dd-46c4-8645-f58ca4d61d1f

Enjoy!

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

2009-08-11T20:50:00Z

[Cross-posting from my own blog]

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 this 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.
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.
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.
RDL Expression Language enhancements
We added direct geospatial data & function support, as well as three types of Lookup functions (Lookup, LookupSet, MultiLookup).

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 we plan to cover more details on the major areas listed above in further blog postings, e.g. on Robert Bruckner's blog.

Enjoy!

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

Some help with Report Builder 2.0 ClickOnce

2009-04-18T01:11:00Z

While Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 did add support for Report Builder 2.0 ClickOnce, not all of the instructions have made it online yet. The following should help users get going until the online content has all been published.

Report Builder 2.0 is made available in three ways:

1. Standalone .MSI
See existing download page .

2. Native mode ClickOnce deployment:
If you are using SQL Server 2008 SP1 in native mode, you simply change the "Custom Action URL" given in the Site Settings page to /ReportBuilder/ReportBuilder_2_0_0_0.application

3. Sharepoint mode ClickOnce deployment:
After you have installed the updated Sharepoint add-in bits, following the directions in the readme to change the Custom Action URL to /_vti_bin/ReportBuilder/ReportBuilder_2_0_0_0.application will change the default Report Builder link on your Sharepoint site to RB2.

By using the Custom Action URL for Report Builder 2 in ClickOnce mode, we allow users to keep using Report Builder 1.0 or any other ClickOnce tool if they wish.

Things to note:

1. ClickOnce install packs include all available languages, the one used at runtime being determined by the client's display language.
2. Client machines need .NET 3.5 SP1 to run the RB2 ClickOnce package.
3. The next update for SQL Server Books Online will include more information on these topics and should be available soon..

SQL Server 2008 SP1 and Report Builder Update

2009-04-08T08:35:00Z

Service Pack 1 for SQL Server 2008 is now available for download. The service pack is primarily a roll-up of Cumulative Updates 1, 2, and 3 and minor fixes made in response to requests reported through the SQL Server community.

While there are no new features in this service pack, a notable addition from a Reporting Services point of view is the ability to configure Click Once deployment to either launch Report Builder 1.0 or the updated Report Builder 2.0, directly from Report Manager (native mode) or SharePoint. If you run Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode, make sure to also install the updated RS add-in for SharePoint.

Furthermore, the April 2009 Feature Pack is now available and includes an updated version of Report Builder 2.0. You can get it either as Report Builder 2.0 stand-alone download, or via click once deployment from a Report Server with SQL Server 2008 SP1 applied.

Summary of download links:

Other download resources:

Enjoy!

Reporting Services Information Aggregator

2008-12-24T01:00:00Z

Want to get an overview, recommendations for good books and other resources, and the latest information about Reporting Services 2008? Check out our MSDN aggregation page for Reporting Services. Looking for the latest downloads for Reporting Services 2008? Take a look at the RS 2008 resources page. Furthermore, research and ask questions on the updated MSDN forums for Reporting Services.

Happy Holidays!

Recent whitepapers

2008-12-16T23:41:00Z

I hope December is treating everyone well.

I wanted to post a quick summary of new resources related to some of the SSRS data sources.

Teradata

Support for Teradata was added to SQL Server Reporting Services in 2008. The focus of the work was on Report Model projects (vs Report Server Projects).

This white paper discusses the functionality in detail. As noted in the document, the .Net provider is required and can be downloaded from Teradata.

Using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services with the .NET Framework Data Provider for Teradata

The core Report Model support with Teradata was also implemented in the just released Service Pack 3 (SP3) for the 2005 version of SQL Server. Note that some manual configuration is required to turn things ‘on’ as well as you need to install the .Net provider from Teradata.

Readme for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP3 and the actual Download Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 3.

Note: More details on configuring connectivity with Teradata's .NET data provider can be found in Robert Bruckner's blog posting.

SAP BI

Some updates to the functionality shipped with SQL Server Reporting Services 2008. This included a toggle for showing technical names in the UI and support for SSO connectivity. The recently published whitepaper covers these topics and has been re-written with additional background, getting started, and troubleshooting information.

Using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services with SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence

Lastly, the higher level page for all the SQL Server 2008 white papers…

All SQL Server 2008 White Papers

Microsoft Chart Controls for .NET Framework 3.5 Released!

2008-10-26T05:30:00Z

[Cross-posting from my own blog]

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!

Report Builder 2.0 Released!

2008-10-18T04:59:00Z

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Report Builder 2.0 RTM (build 10.00.1600.60) is now available on Microsoft Download Center as stand-alone installer in more than 20 languages.

Report Builder 2.0 provides an intuitive report authoring environment for business and power users. It supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services including flexible data layout, data visualizations, and richly formatted text features. Compared to Business Intelligence Development Studio 2008, Report Builder 2.0 includes a number of additional features:

Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions
Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server
Support for using server resources such as shared data sources

Enjoy!

Report Builder 2.0 - RC1 Release

2008-08-25T23:40:00Z

Report Builder 2.0 RC1 is now available on Microsoft Download Center. Use this link for download. RC1 delivers improvements in the following areas compared to RC0:

Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions.
Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server.
Support for using server resources such as shared data sources.
A query designer for Microsoft SQL Server data sources.
Enhancements to the Report Builder 2.0 ribbon.

Please direct your feedback to the main Reporting Services MSDN forum, or to http://connect.microsoft.com/.

Thanks,
Robert

Report Builder 2.0 Release Plan Update

2008-08-08T03:10:00Z

With SQL Server 2008 RTM announced, we wanted to give you an update on the release plans for Report Builder 2.0.

Report Builder 2.0 will ship as part of the updated feature pack for SQL Server 2008 in fall of this year. It will be, as it was in RC0, a web download only. It will be available from the SQL Server feature pack download page. At release, Report Builder will be available in 21 languages similar to the Reporting Services SharePoint Add-in. The ClickOnce version of Report Builder 2.0 will not be supported in this timeframe and we are actively looking at releasing it as soon as possible after Report Builder 2.0 release.

An RC1 release will be made available, tentatively at the end of August. This build will contain all of the final features for Report Builder 2.0 and will only be in English. We’ll post a link as soon as it is available.

As always, we look forward to your feedback on Report Builder. Please provide feedback directly at: http://connect.microsoft.com/. Thank you.

Report Variables and Group Variables in Reporting Services 2008

2008-07-22T05:30:00Z

Note: this posting provides an overview of when to consider using Report Variables and/or Group Variables for general report design patterns. There is also a detailed blog posting that describes a particular report design pattern (custom aggregation) report authors may have been using in Reporting Services 2005, which requires group variables in Reporting Services 2008.

On-Demand Report Processing

Reporting Services 2008 features an on-demand report processing engine. This on-demand architecture has a number of key advantages over the processing engine design that existed in previous releases. The most significant benefits are improvements to report engine scalability and performance (you can read a bit more about it here). Because of this fundamental change from previous versions, there are some specific design patterns that have changed.

The new processing engine in Reporting Services 2008 still retrieves datasets upfront, but only pre-computes certain invariants, such as grouping, sorting, filter expressions, aggregates, subreport parameters and queries. Everything else are "on-demand" evaluated expressions at the time a particular page is rendered; most notably, textbox values, and style expressions.

As a result, the internal execution order of expressions in Reporting Services 2008 might be vastly different compared to previous releases. If your reports make custom code / custom assembly calls with side-effects relying on undocumented expression evaluation order (e.g. accumulating state via an expression in a table detail section, and relying on the state being fully populated in a "later" expression), the report may not work as before when upgrading it to Reporting Services 2008. Report and group variables were introduced to address this scenario.

Report and Group Variables

In Reporting Services 2008, one can declare variables that are global throughout the report or local to particular group scopes and refer to them in expressions. Report and group variables can only be set/initialized once and have a read-only semantics.

Typical use cases for variables include:

Caching values / expensive calculations:
Report/group variables can be used to make an expensive call to an external assembly once, cache the result, and then reference the variable value from other expressions in the report (to avoid re-evaluating the original expression repeatedly during on-demand report processing).
Time-dependent calculations:
For example, retrieve a currency conversion value and store it in a report/group variable to be applied consistently during the lifetime of the rendering session.
Specific execution-order semantics:
Achieve particular expression execution order semantics that is independent of the rendering extension used later for generating the report output. This use case is not as common, but also a bit more complex. It is discussed in detail in another blog posting titled Using Group Variables In Reporting Services 2008 for Custom Aggregation. That posting also includes sample reports and step-by-step instructions.

-- Robert

Building the new builder.

2008-06-30T22:10:00Z

As you have likely read through various avenues, including the past several CTP releases of SQL Server 2008, the SQl Server Reporting Services team has been working on the next phase of our Report Builder application. The new end user report authoring tool for SQL Server 2008 is Report Builder 2.0 and you can download the latest version from the SQL 2008 RC0 Feature pack.

In total, there are three report authoring tools in Reporting Services for SQL Server 2008:

· Report Designer – Our report developer-focused tool offering the full functionality of the Report Definition Language (RDL) in the Visual Studio environment.

· Report Builder 2.0 – Our Information worker-focus report authoring environment also offering the full functionality of RDL with a Microsoft Office look and feel.

· Report Builder 1.0 – Our ad hoc reporting tool from SQL Server 2005 with full report model support and limited RDL support.

The name for what is now Report Builder 2.0 has evolved during the full SQL Server 2008 development cycle and it has created some confusion. It was originally called the ‘Report Designer Preview’ in several of the SQL Server 2008 CTPs. Some of the reason(s) for the approach were to allow for iterations of development and customer feedback. This is why the whole 'preview' name existed to begin with, to make it clear it was not a finished product, to get feedback on specific features/usability, as well as test the waters for 'fit' of the product within the user workflow.

While we moved RB2.0 forward, we were also working on the developer design experience in BIDs, migrating it to the VS 2008 infrastructure under the hoods and updating portions of the design environment so there was similarity/parity with RB2.0. If you compare the core areas inside the two tools, you will see things are the same. For example, the grouping pane, data pane, and dialogs have the same functionality between the BIDs Report Designer and Report Builder 2.0. This shared component approach willl allow for improved long term maintenance of the report design environments and we feel it will be more 'familiar' for users who use/move between tools.

· RB2.0: The general release will be a separate download, like the current RC0 release noted above.

· RB1.0: The traditional Report Builder will ship with SSRS 2008 but with the “1.0” attached to its name., and its functionality is more or less the same as what was in SSRS 2005. This is intentional as you likely can infer from all the above notes, our efforts are going into the new RB2.0 experience but we wanted to provide the 1.0 experience to help customers transition from the 1.0 experience to the 2.0 experience. Full support for report models will be added to Report Builder 2.0 in a future release.

Regarding Licensing, it will be the same/similar to Report Builder 1.0 and SSRS 2005 licensing.

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/howtobuy/howtolicensers.mspx

I command thee...

2008-05-30T22:45:00Z

A, not uncommon request from SQL Server Reporting Services customers is the ability to use command line switches wtih Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) like you would with a standard\out of the box Visual Studio experience. Well, I am happy to say, we have done some work in this area for SQL Server Reporting Services 2008, and the RC0 release due very soon. I wanted to show a few samples so you can see whats coming and because its not a visual feature, your not likely to see it at the upcomming Tech Ed, for the many which will attend. Tech Ed North America 2008. Surprisingly, command line output does not draw the same crowd as cool new data visualization or richly formatted text features. Go figure.

As background, the samples I did here were with a fresh install of SQL Server 2008, so I had not installed Visual Studio 2008. Also, I should note there is lots of documentation on MSDN for using the Visual Studio command line but I found some of the samples differ in syntax. So, I based mine on what I read wih the command line help, or 'devenv /?'. A word of wisdom, when dealing with file paths which contain spaces. The double quotes are the standard, however be aware of the character difference when you are copyin/pasting between applications. Someone, could in theory, waste a lot of time trying to get command line operations to work, and swear they had the syntax proper, but there is difference between " and “

Also, I am generally lazy so to make make things easier I added the path to the folder containing DEVENV to my OS environment path, so
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

Deploy: Well, the clear winner and main desire folks are after with the command line, is the ability to deploy to their servers....

devenv "C:\Documents and Settings\myuser\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\projects\Aworks\Aworks.sln" /deploy myconfig

Which spits back the following, looking like what you see in Output window inside BIDs. Notice it includes the warning for the data source, and indeed in the Project Proeprties dialog in BIDs, I set 'OverwriteDataSources' to false.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Microsoft (R) Visual Studio Version 9.0.30428.1.
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corp. All rights reserved.
------ Build started: Project: Aworks, Configuration: myconfig ------
Build complete -- 0 errors, 0 warnings
------ Deploy started: Project: Aworks, Configuration: myconfig ------
Deploying to http://theservername/reportserver
Deploying data source '/aworks/aworks_shared'.
Warning : Cannot deploy data source aworks_shared to the server because it already exists and OverwriteDataSources is not specified.
Deploying report '/aworks/aworks_salesorderdetail'.
Deploying report '/aworks/salesandterritory'.
Deploy complete -- 0 errors, 1 warnings
========== Build: 1 succeeded or up-to-date, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========
========== Deploy: 1 succeeded, 0 failed, 0 skipped ==========

<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Log the output: Add the /Out switch and redirect to a file (cumulative).

devenv "C:\Documents and Settings\myuser\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\projects\Aworks\Aworks.sln" /deploy myconfig /out c:\mybuildlog.txt

Build: to check for errors, but nothing is deployed.

devenv "C:\Documents and Settings\myuser\My Documents\Visual Studio 2008\projects\Aworks\Aworks.sln" /build

Wrapping up...

2008-05-07T08:30:00Z

Well, the blog has not been that active, no doubt about it. However the main reason is the team has been working hard on the final features that will be in SQL Server 2008. We also were working hard to understand and act on the great feedback we recieved from the Feb 2008 CTP. If You have not tried the Feb CTP or have not seen the many other notices about where to find it, the Feb CTP can be found here. The SSRS team has also been growing and some folks have changed out. You have likely ran into many of the veterans and some of the new folks at conferences and such.

So now that we are winding down on SQL 2008 and gearing up planning for future projects, keep an eye out for much more frequent updates from this blog. We will be focusing on this blog as a team...hence the orginal name as a 'team' blog :)