This page has 2 threads | Add post

Blogs

Finding our blogs useful? Please consider helping us to share more!

Wise Owl Training - SSRS blogs

Showing blogs 1-14 (out of 14)

Making Reporting Services use consistent chart colours

Posted by Shaun Wantling on 28 October 2022

A simple way to ensure that SSRS allocates colours consistently to different charts in an embedded table

Tags:
SSRS > Charts

What Power BI report server is, and how to create reports through it

Posted by Andy Brown on 23 December 2020

Puzzled as to why there are two near-identical versions of Power BI Desktop? Wondering if web portal is anything like Power BI report server? Confused as to what a paginated report is? This blog answers all these questions, and more!

Tags:
Power BI > General SSRS > Report Manager

A comparison of SQL Server Reporting Services and Power BI

Posted by Andy Brown on 18 October 2019

Power BI improves with each monthly update. Will it reach a point where SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) becomes redundant? This detailed blog compares the two products, and considers the future of SSRS.

Tags:
SSRS > General Power BI > General

A table-valued function in SQL to split a comma-delimited list

Posted by Andy Brown on 11 June 2019

If you're creating Reporting Services reports using multivalue parameters and stored procedures, you'll find this function to split a list of values into a single-table column useful.

Tags:
SQL > Functions SSRS > Parameters

Mapping stored procedure parameters to SSRS parameters

Posted by Andy Brown on 02 May 2019

This blog explains why you might want to use the PARAMETERS tab in the Dataset Properties dialog box in SSRS.

Tags:
SSRS > Parameters

How to get rid of lots of blank rows in a Report Builder table

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 February 2018

There seems to be an occasional bug in Report Builder which fills a table with blank rows. Here's one owl's way to get round it.

Tags:
SSRS > Report Builder

Which should you learn: Report Builder or Reporting Services?

Posted by Andy Brown on 16 February 2018

Report Builder and SQL Server Reporting Services are almost identical - which makes the small but important differences even harder to explain.

Tags:
SSRS > Report Builder SSRS > General

Problems with Shared Datasets and Subreports in SSRS

Posted by Andrew Gould on 23 April 2013

If you're using shared datasets to populate subreports in Reporting Services you might have encountered an error when you preview your reports. This short blog explains what the problem is and offers a few simple suggestions to work around the issue.

Tags:
SSRS > Lists, subreports

Prevent Reporting Services from caching data

Posted by Andy Brown on 01 October 2012

By default SSRS will create files with extension .rdl.data to cache data. This blog gives two and a half ways to ensure you're always seeing the latest data in a report.

Tags:
SSRS > General

Use SQL, parameters and bookmarks to create a grid of clickable links

Posted by Andy Brown on 06 August 2012

To make report navigation easier, you can create a 2-dimensional matrix of clickable links at the top of a report. This blog shows you how!

Tags:
SSRS > Matrices SQL > Stored procedures T-SQL > Other

Make an SSRS matrix dynamic, like a pivot table

Posted by Andy Brown on 06 August 2012

Create a matrix whose row, column and data fields are all selectable from dropdown lists.

Tags:
SSRS > Matrices

Using a Parameter to set the Data Source for a Report

Posted by Andy Brown on 06 August 2012

A single report in Reporting Services can serve many masters. This blog shows how to allow a user to choose which data a report should display, using a dropdown parameter.

Tags:
SSRS > Parameters SSRS > Linking to data

Reporting Services - report and group variables

Posted by Andy Brown on 21 June 2012

If you're not sure when - or whether - you should be using report or group variables in SSRS, read this blog to find out how to speed up your reports and solve other problems.

Tags:
SSRS > Variables

Controlling the number of rows per page in Reporting Services

Posted by Andrew Gould on 11 May 2012

Unfortunately, Reporting Services doesn't have a simple setting that allows you to control the number of rows you see on each page. However, you can control this using a clever combination of an expression with a grouping level. Read this blog to find out how!

Tags:
SSRS > Tables SSRS > Designing reports

Some other pages relevant to the above blogs include:

This page has 2 threads

Add a new post

From:	MJF1
When:	09 Aug 18 at 17:35

My company has changed a major software package. I have been asked to recreate a report in SSRS 2017. The report has two parts. The first part has 12 lines, each line has 4 fields and these 4 fields in a line are populated with a separate TSQL Query. I inserted an SSRS List into the body, into which I inserted a rectangle then inserted 4 textboxes. Once the textboxes were positioned within the rectangle correctly, I copied the rectangle with the intention of pasting 11 copies into the list. To avoid disturbing the contents of each rectangle, I used the rectangle's location property fields to position it within the list. I noticed textboxes had moved within its rectangle and other odd behaviors. Is there a technique to create a report of textboxes that can be arranged in an orderly way?

From:	RADII
When:	04 May 17 at 06:24

Building a user-friendly GUI for Report Builder

I have a specific reporting requirement and would be very grateful for comments on the best way achieve it.

Schools currently produce a large number of reports in Excel for internal management purposes — these tend to be unique to each school — which is the rationale as to why I am looking to build a friendly application — they also require repetitive wrangling every time an updated report is required. The reports contain a combination of tables, visuals, and text.

The data for the reports will exist in an Azure SQL DB.

At present I am seeking advice about whether it is possible to develop an easy-to-use interface for MS Report Builder for schools to build and distribute reports based on a schedule specified by the user — these reports will be produced as pdfs and as MS Powerpoint and Word documents.

A number of specific templates will be designed for schools to adapt to their requirements — Is it feasible to consider developing an interface for report Builder/SSRS that is useable by school staff who have no technical knowledge???

Is there a better way to tackle this problem??

I’ve tried PowerBI, but it is too complex for most staff in schools, and last time I looked at it, there was very limited ways to reconfigure the UI to make it approachable for non-technical users.

From:	Andy B
When:	04 May 17 at 09:26

There are already a number of systems out there, as I'm sure you know - we've done a fair amount of training for people selling and using Progresso, for example.

Report Builder won't help you, I think - it's designing for creating single reports. Its big brother, Reporting Services, will. If you use SQL Server 2016, you can create an impressive looking web-based dashboard and publish reports to it. More importantly, subscriptions allow you to use SQL Server Agent behind the scenes to send emails containing reports out to people, and these reports can be in pretty much any format (Excel, Word, PDF, etc).

Two other options to consider are Power BI Desktop, which allows you to create reports and publish them to the cloud, and Tableau. I know very little about this, except that it has a good user base among at least our clients, and seems popular.

Add a new post

BY TOPIC

SQL AND SQL SERVER BLOGS

SSRS BLOGS

Wise Owl Training - SSRS blogs

Making Reporting Services use consistent chart colours

What Power BI report server is, and how to create reports through it

A comparison of SQL Server Reporting Services and Power BI

A table-valued function in SQL to split a comma-delimited list

Mapping stored procedure parameters to SSRS parameters

How to get rid of lots of blank rows in a Report Builder table

Which should you learn: Report Builder or Reporting Services?

Problems with Shared Datasets and Subreports in SSRS

Prevent Reporting Services from caching data

Use SQL, parameters and bookmarks to create a grid of clickable links

Make an SSRS matrix dynamic, like a pivot table

Using a Parameter to set the Data Source for a Report

Reporting Services - report and group variables

Controlling the number of rows per page in Reporting Services

Head office

London

Manchester