Ten Common SQL Server Reporting Services Challenges and Solutions(转)

08 October 2009

by Ryan Duclos

In every business there are several different groups of report users, from chief executives, to business analysts, to operational staff, who all need access to reliable and current data in order to track overall business performance, investigate the effectiveness of individual business functions, or simply for ad-hoc day-to-day reporting.

In most organizations, at least some attempt has been made to meet these reporting needs. Historically, however, the problem has been that the available reports have not always been up-to-date, or even accurate. Furthermore, individual departments have tended to adopt a "silo" approach, using different tools/systems to create reports that are useful within their silo, but not necessarily consistent or compatible with those produced by other departments. In many cases, there doesn't even exist a shared understanding of the business data that underpin these reports.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), when it arrived, offered a much-needed means to centralize and standardize reporting across the business, and it has largely delivered. Having used SSRS 2005 for the past 4 years, I've found that, with a little effort, it can satisfy most business, ad-hoc, embedded, portal integration, web, and custom reporting needs. However, I've also found that small "gotchas" can halt progress and cause considerable frustration, as it's not always easy to find ways round them in the documentation.

In this article, I round up some of the more interesting challenges that I have encountered in my report development efforts, and the solutions I've found to them. Hopefully, these will be useful to the many (the majority?) people who are still using SSRS 2005 in production. Some of the solutions offered can still be used in SSRS 2008. I conclude the article with a review of some of the issues that SSRS 2008 has fixed, or at least mitigated.

Challenges/Solutions

SSRS offers a range of different reporting techniques and technologies, to cater for the reporting needs of all levels of users, from the chief executives, to business analysts, to operational staff. Their reporting needs range from simple, tabular ad-hoc reports, to parameterized, linked or snapshot reports, to complex drill-down and drill-through multi-level reports.

Following is the list of some of the challenges I have encountered while developing such reports using Reporting Services 2000/2005. In the sections that follow, I will cover each challenge individually, providing insight into what may cause the difficulty, alongside a possible solution.

1. Horizontal Tables: Calendar Reports
2. Select "ALL" Query Parameter option
3. Multiple Sheets in Excel
4. Excel Merged Cell Issues
5. Blank Pages
6. Vertical Text
7. Report Data in Header/Footer
8. Are you missing XML/CSV data on your exports?
9. Template Reports
10. Using the Reporting Services database

A ZIP file containing samples of the reports detailed in this article is availableto download, try out and amend to suit your own needs.

 

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