This question comes up quite often.  A report requires a user to be authenticated using their own network user name and password.  Perhaps the data source performs row-level filtering for the user or the UserID global user object is used in a query or filter expression to return user-speci... [More]

In cases where you want the data or content in a report to be different for each user, there are a couple different ways to approach this.  This will depend on whether you want to return user-specific data or whether you want to use logic to hide and show objects in the report depending on a us... [More]

Printed reports were the norm for decades. When a user wanted to get some important information, they would use their software to print a report and then read it from the page. Today online reports are used to give user access to important information without the need to put ink or toner on paper. ... [More]

Subscriptions in Reporting Services are designed to run on a schedule and there isn?t a built-in feature to just run a subscription manually. This is actually quite easy to do with a little bit of TSQL or .NET programming code.  You can either use the SSRS web service API via code or command l... [More]

Article from the Architecture Journal ? 12-15-2009 by Paul Turley Once upon a time, there was a big company whose IT department wanted to ensure that everyone would see only good data in their reports. To make sure of this, they ruled that all reports would be created by IT from data ... [More]

How should date type parameters be prompted?  There are two common approaches depending on how you want the parameter to appear.  Keep in mind that in a cube, a date attribute is typically not stored or presented as a date type. So you can either present the parameter as a hierarchy or as ... [More]

What lessons have we learned about managing report projects and what are the best practices? Since each report is stored in a separate XML-based RDL file, Reporting Services projects play well with version control.  Visual Studio Team System and Visual Source Safe integrate with the Visua... [More]

Top ranked lists are a common type of report. In many cases business users may want to see only a specific number of records at the top or bottom of a range, effectively reporting the best or worst items in ranked order. We see ranked lists in all types of applications to answer questions like "... [More]

Chart reports are an effective way to visualize data to show trends and comparisons in a way that can help the user get real meaning from numbers. However, chart data can be meaningless without context. This example will show you how to display a column chart with a goal line so users can easily und... [More]

Report Recipes This is the second in a series of three articles highlighting the Report Solution Patterns and Recipes from Chapter 7 of Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. As we have endeavored to solve various business problems, we've learned to do some interesting things with Report... [More]

Being named an MVP this year is very exciting news for me.  As I was trying to come up with the right words for a post, Stacey Toevs, who maintains our corporate Intranet site created this feature article for a series and internal Hitachi Consulting initiative called "Be Known".  I thoug... [More]

When using the Jump to Report action int he web browser, the target report is displayed in the same browser window by default.  You can call the JavaScript window.open method to open a new browser window.  Use an expression to build a Jump to URL action with the appropriate report server, ... [More]

To create a "greenbar" report in a table with alternating row colors, you can simply use the RowNumber function to determine whether a row is odd or even. This also works with the newer Tablix-style matrix in SSRS 2008.  However the matrix data region in SSRS 2000 and 2005 doesn't support the R... [More]

  A forum poster wanted to use a StartDate parameter to limit the range of dates available in a second parameter to that date through the end of the same year. This can be done if you would like to use drop-down list of dates.  To do this, use a query to return a string type column wit... [More]

You can define a calculated field for the datset outside of the query using a Visual Basic.NET expression.  In the Data Fields or Report Data window, right-click the dataset and add a new calculated field.  Give it a name and then create an expression like the following.  There is no ... [More]

I've decided that from now on, consulting project estimates will be padded for an additional week to get Oracle connectivity working on my dev. machine.  Designing an Analysis Services solution with an Oracle data source should be easy if you are using the right data provider and have Oracle's ... [More]

On the MSDN forums I see a lot of questions about how to use program code or command line script to automate or simplify administrative tasks.  Reporting Services has an extensive API for performing practically any task you can perform through Report Manager or Visual Studio.  Automation s... [More]

If you have created multiple drill-through reports, you know that the report navigation works in one direction and that some users struggle to find the best method to navigate back to a previous report. The report toolbar contains navigation controls including a Back button for the previous report i... [More]

Displaying every-other row with an alternating background color can help the reader follow the contents of a tabular report but sometimes it may be more important to differentiate between groups of data rather than just the rows. This variation of the "green bar" report creates bands of rows with al... [More]

Report designers often revert to overly complex report designs and often use subreports unnecessarily. Building a report on a single dataset query to return all related rows gives you greater flexibility to group and filter the data. The following sample report contains a single dataset using the f... [More]