Tag Archive: Reporting Services

  • Video: Automating SSAS OLAP Cube documentation

    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
  • Style Sheets with 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

    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
  • Use Stored Procedure Output Parameters in SSRS

    It’s commonly known that there are a few frustrations when using stored procedures as the source for SSRS 2005 datasets, the inability to cope with temporary tables is always a key one, another is not being able to get at output parameters or return values. This post explains the easiest way to get at the output parameters and return value. Lets assume you are using the following stored proc: IF OBJECT_ID('myProc') IS NOT NULL DROP…

    » Read more
  • SSRS Report Performance monitoring

    Today’s Frog-Blog top-tips are quite simple ones, but ones that I always find very useful. SSRS Report Performance monitoring. Once you start to build up a few Reporting Services reports, you need to find out how they’re performing, whether any particular reports are causing the server problems and even which users are running which reports. The following set of queries should point you in the right direction. They should all be run…

    » Read more
  • Report Parameter Selection Memory

    This post explains a method of enhancing Reporting Services reports to make them more user friendly. I have been quizzed many times by end users who want reports to remember the parameter selections so that next time they run the report they haven’t got to re-select the same parameters. This is especially useful if there are a lot of long parameter lists, and each user tends to run the same selection frequently. This process is made…

    » Read more
  • Open SSRS report in a new Window

    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…

    » Read more
  • Convert MDX fields to SQL

    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,…

    » Read more
  • Chris Hays Reporting Services Sleazy Hacks

    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

    » Read more