Monthly Archives: December 2007

Open SSRS report in a new Window

By Alex Whittles | Published December 20, 2007

There isn’t yet a built-in facility within Reporting Services to open a report link (i.e. a drillthrough report) in a new browser window or tab, however it isn’t too tricky to get this to work using a bit of javascript.

javascript:void(window.open(Destination,’_blank’))

My preferred method is to wrap this up into a custom code function such as

Function OpenURL(ByVal URL As String) As String
Return “javascript:void(window.open(‘” & URL & “‘,’_blank’))”
End Function

In your report, you can then just set the navigation property to jump to a URL of a website:

=Code.OpenURL(“https://www.purplefrogsystems.com“)

Or to the path of a the drillthrough report:

=Code.OpenURL(“http://[Your Server]/ReportServer?/Folder/ReportName&rs:Command=Render”)

If you have parameters that you need to pass in, you can add these into the URL either fixed or dynamic:

=Code.OpenURL(“http://[Your Server]/ReportServer?/Folder/ReportName&rs:Command=Render &MyFirstParam=Value1&MySecondParam=” & Fields!MyField.Value)

Please note that this will not work in the BIDS development environment, it will only work once you have deployed the report to the Report Server.

Excel Addin for Analysis Services

By Alex Whittles | Published December 15, 2007

For any users of Analysis Services, if you haven’t already downloaded the Excel (2002/2003) addin you’re missing out.

It’s a free download from Microsoft which significantly expands Excel’s cube querying ability. Well recommended!

Get it here…

Convert MDX fields to SQL

By Alex Whittles | Published December 15, 2007

A number of our customers have reporting systems that use both MDX and SQL, retrieving data from both OLAP and SQL Server databases. This generates the problem of converting an MDX field ([Dimension].[Hierarchy].&[Attribute]) into SQL Server field value (Attribute). The following code is a Reporting Services custom code section that will rip off the MDX and leave you with the value.

Public Function MDXParamToSQL(Parameter As String, All As String) As String

Dim Val As String
Val = Parameter

        If Val.Contains(“[“) Then
            If Val.ToLower().Contains(“].[all]”) Then
                Return All
            Else
                Val = Val.Substring(1, Val.LastIndexOf(“]”) – 1)
                Val = Val.Substring(Val.LastIndexOf(“[“) + 1)
                Return Val
            End If
        Else
            Return Val
        End If

End Function

Lets say that you have a report using an MDX dataset, if you want to call a drillthrough report based on SQL Server you will need to pass at least one attribute through as a parameter to filter the second report. If you add the code above to the custom code section, you can set the parameter value of the second report to

=Code.MDXParamToSQL(Fields!MyField.Value,”%”)

The second report will then just receive the member name, not the full MDX unique identifier.

Chris Hays Reporting Services Sleazy Hacks

By Alex Whittles | Published December 15, 2007

It really wouldn’t be fair to kick off the Frog-Blog without a shout out to Chris Hays and his superb ‘Sleazy Hacks’ site. If you want to push SQL Server Reporting Services further than anyone else, then Chris will definately have something of use to you. He designed the RDL report language – the guy knows what he’s talking about.

blogs.msdn.com/ChrisHays