Author: way0utwest

One of my goals this year was to spend some time learning Reporting Services. Not necessarily do the 10,000 hours to become an expert, but perhaps the 100 hours or so Andy Warren mentioned in his Professional Development presentation.

I’ve done a little getting SSRS installed and running on a few machines, and decided to document a basic report with the BIDS SSRS wizard. It’s basic, but it shows the easiest way to build a basic report.

First start up BIDS and create a new project.

The wizard starts with an opening screen, which is a waste. So be sure you check the “Don’t show this page again” box.

The first thing you get is a data source box, which is needed for any report.

 

I also checked the “Shared data source” box so that this source can be shared on other reports.

You have to enter credentials, and I picked a new login/user that I set up with minimal SELECT rights to a couple databases.

Next is the query

I picked the Query Builder, though you can just enter the query. The first screen shows the basic designer.

If you right click in the top pane, you can select the “Add table”

and you’ll get a list of tables.

You can double click a table to add it, or select it and click “Add”. Click close when you are done.

You get your table(s) in the top pane, and as you select columns, they get added in the bottom pane as part of the query. If you close the Query Builder, you see your query back in the wizard.

The next step in the wizard is to pick a type of report; I left mine as a tabular report.

The next screen shows some grouping option. For basic reports, you add things to the details. If you want to group up by data that is repeated, like by Customer, add those in other boxes.

Choose a style.

And then pick a report name. 

I checked Preview Report,

and then I’d see the report in BIDS. 

Next, need to deploy this to the Report Server and make it work.

I saw someone post a question recently about tracking down who deleted a stored procedure. I suggested the default trace, and linked to a beginner article on it.

However there was another post that had a better way to track things. In SSMS there’s a report that will help you:

Right click a database, and drill down as shown above through reports to the “Schema Change History” report and select it. Previously I had issued this:

ALTER TABLE aa ADD bb varchar(20)

And when I ran my report, I found this in the list:

It doesn’t give the code, but it says that I altered the proc today.

I then tested for stored procedure. I created, and then deleted a quick proc, so it only existed on my system for a few minutes. When I ran the schema report again, despite this proc no longer being around, it was there:

This comes off the default trace, so there’s only a limited amount of data kept. If you catch something quick enough, however, you can easily track down some information about it.

One of the things I heard recently from someone was that they clicked some of the links in the newsletter and the front page, expecting to read some information, and got sent to an event instead. That was annoying, and I can understand that. I do try to put in good descriptions, but perhaps that’s not always clear.

  So I decided to experiment with some images. I remember Slashdot using some images for articles, and I always liked that. Didn’t use them a lot myself, but they were funny at times, especially the Bill Gates one. That one with the Borg was always humorous to me.

So I searched around after a few failed attempts to build my own icons, and for a few dollars, I grabbed some icons and added some text.

I built this one for technical articles:

and this one for events

I also have a couple that I’m working on for webinars and perhaps other things as well. We already have the Raw Materials comic icon:

Let me know if you think this is helpful, and if I should mark other article types, perhaps by subject, or even with a globe or arrow to denote articles not on SQLServerCentral.

My oldest son graduates high school today. After a long journey, he’s the first of my wife’s and my three kids that is moving on. It’s a big day, and we have almost all our family in town to watch the first of our next generation becoming an adult.

I’m on vacation from work, but I wanted to post this and reflect a little on this transition. I remember my graduation, almost as an anti-climax since school essentially ended a few days prior, and I was already looking forward to leaving my house, heading to college and moving on with my own life, separate from my family’s.

I think my son is feeling a lot of that. School ended earlier for him, he’s independent like I was, often away from our house, enjoying the freedom of a car. Like me, he’ll graduate before he’s 18, but he’ll be an adult in a little over a week and then truly responsible for himself. He’s heading to college, though close to home, at UC-Denver, in downtown Denver.

For me it was a time of huge optimism. I was excited about getting to college, learning a few things and then embarking on a career. I suspect it’s similar to my son, and I hope it is. He’s more compassionate and considerate of the world than I was, volunteering his time to help others and hoping to change the world for the better. I just wanted to make money.

It’s inspiring, and exciting to think about him moving on, and I have hope for the next generation to see someone that is more idealistic, and wants to do the right thing to help others. To make this world a better place and not just advance his own interests. I had worried that most of his generation would embrace consumerism, and they might, but he doesn’t and realizes there is more to life.

He’s technologically savvy, but he’s not a geek. He’s a linguist and hoping to be a teacher some day. I wish him luck in his journey and hope he enjoys it.