Call today 0845 643 6463

Reporting Services

  • Reflecting on 2025 & looking ahead to 2026: a data-driven perspective

    Reflecting on 2025 & looking ahead to 2026: a data-driven perspectiveDecember 19th, 2025 in Artificial Intelligence, Blog, Business Intelligence, Machine Learning, Microsoft Fabric, Power BI, Real-time Data, Reporting Services

    As 2025 draws to a close, it is clear this year marked a pivotal shift in how businesses leverage data and artificial intelligence (AI). What was once considered experimental has firmly become strategic, operational, and value-creating for organisations of every size from nimble local businesses to ambitious global brands. At Purple Frog, our work helping UK businesses transform data into business insight has shown a dramatic evolution in…

    » Read more

  • Map Postcodes in SSRS Reporting Services

    March 5th, 2012 in Blog, Reporting Services

    I was asked the other day for some help on how to plot data by postcode on an SSRS spatial map. I’ve done this a few times, initially for a presentation I gave back in 2010 and most recently a couple of weeks ago when I wanted to analyse the SQLMidlands membership. It occurred to me that despite posting a number of blogs using spatial data, I’ve not done one on the basics of plotting postcode data. So here we go… Scenario You…

    » Read more

  • Video: Automating SSAS OLAP Cube documentation

    May 26th, 2011 in Analysis Services, Blog, Business Intelligence, Reporting Services

    Automating OLAP cube documentation – SQLBits presentation For anyone that missed my presentation at SQLBits 8 in April, the video is now available here. In this 1 hour session I present a method of automating the creation of documentation for SSAS OLAP cubes by using DMVs (dynamic management views) and spatial data, querying the metadata of the cube in realtime. The results include the BUS matrix, star schemas, attribute lists, hierarchies…

    » Read more

  • OLAP Cube Documentation in SSRS part 3

    September 29th, 2010 in Analysis Services, Blog, Business Intelligence, Reporting Services, SQL Server

    This is the 3rd and final post in this series of blog posts, showing how you can use SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), DMVs and spatial data to generate real time automated user guide documentation for your Analysis Services (SSAS) OLAP cube. Part 1 – Creating the DMV stored procs Part 2 – Create the SSRS reports Part 3 – Use spatial data and maps to create a star schema view Download Source Code UPDATE: I presented a 1…

    » Read more

  • OLAP Cube Documentation in SSRS part 2

    September 27th, 2010 in Analysis Services, Blog, Business Intelligence, Reporting Services, SQL Server

    In my previous post I described how to create a number of stored procedures that use Dynamic Management Views (DMVs) to return the metadata structure of an SSAS 2008 OLAP cube, including dimensions, attributes, measure groups, BUS matrix etc. In this post I’m going to use those procs to create a set of SSRS 2008 reports that will serve as the automated documentation of your cube. I’m going to make the following assumptions:…

    » Read more

  • OLAP Cube Documentation in SSRS part 1

    September 25th, 2010 in Analysis Services, Blog, Business Intelligence, Reporting Services, SQL Server

    Being a business intelligence consultant, I like to spend my time designing data warehouses, ETL scripts and OLAP cubes. An unfortunate consequence of this is having to write the documentation that goes with the fun techy work. So it got me thnking, is there a slightly more fun techy way of automating the documentation of OLAP cubes… There are some good tools out there such as BI Documenter, but I wanted a way of having more control over…

    » Read more

  • SQL Server 2008 R2 – PowerPivot and Master Data Services

    May 18th, 2010 in Analysis Services, Blog, Integration Services, Reporting Services, SQL Server

    Purple Frog spent a very interesting day at Microsoft last week, at one of their many events promoting the launch of SQL Server 2008 R2. Rafal Lukewiecki presented an entertaining (as always!) and informative series of talks covering the release, focusing on the enhanced Business Intelligence tools available. The primary changes to note are Power Pivot – An in memory, client side add-in to Excel, that allows users to create virtual cubes on…

    » Read more

  • Clearing SSRS Query cache

    April 7th, 2010 in .Net, Blog, Reporting Services

    When developing SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) reports, BIDS caches the query results when you preview the report. This cache is then used next time you run a preview. This has the benefit of speeding up report development, but it does cause a problem when you want to test changing data. A simple way of forcing the cache to refresh is to open the folder containing the .rdl report files, and delete the corresponding .rdl.data files. The…

    » Read more

  • Style Sheets with Reporting Services

    June 14th, 2009 in Blog, Reporting Services

    Firstly sorry for not posting anything for a while, I can only blame spending too much time working and on my uni assignments – not much time free these days! I stumbled upon a great post by Barry King, demonstrating a way of applying database driven style configuration to a set of reporting services reports, in the absence of any style sheet support in SSRS. It doesn’t rely on custom code (most people’s favourite way of…

    » Read more

  • Dynamic MDX in Reporting Services

    September 18th, 2008 in Analysis Services, Blog, Reporting Services, SQL Server

    After a couple of days off work last week with SQL Bits III and SQL 2008 Unleashed, it’s back to the grindstone this week; however before I get onto the serious stuff I’d like to say thank you to the organisers of both events. Watching you on stage headbanging to Rockstar – legendary! (You can see for yourself here and here…). Anyway, back to MDX… This post explains how you can build a dynamic MDX query in Reportins…

    » Read more