Sydney Sql Server User Group 9th September 2008

Quite an interesting night based around Sql Server Reporting Services 2008…..

The pizza was plentiful…Cholesterol levels rose quite a bit last night.

Grant from Angry Koala, gave away some of his little koala bears for answers to some of his questions!
Interesting Marketing ploy!
Maybe MacroView needs to give away a lot more cubes!

The exciting news is that in October a SQL Server 2008 feature Pack will come out with lots more goodies such as report builder with a nice office 2007 look and being almost the same as the report designer!
Business users should get exciting.
There will be some other exciting new extras in this so will let you guys know…..
Hopefully will go through all this in the sql code camp in October etc…
There should be a lot more feature packs so that nice enhancements can be delivered faster and easier….

The new report designer is much nicer and changed quite a bit.
The tablix controls means smarter simpler and more powerful reporting without code gymnastics!

Big reports run smarter – eg. Only render the first page so they won’t bring the server to it’s knees!

Also the outputs to Excel are better along with the new output to Word. Nice!!!
Apparently one of the uses is to generate and send monthly invoicing etc….

The rich text stuff was only briefly flashed on the screen, but everything is so much nicer that you won’t want to do anything with the “old” stuff…

Two tips of the day:
1: Setting the interactive size for height and width to zero means it will fit the whole screen – e.g. no next page stuff.
The page size settings apply to printing…..

2: Name all reports starting with a number e.g. R001 – New Prospects.
That way every time a client ( or internal user ) calls about a report, it is really easy to figure out which one.
And what with the long names you use, many users will also get to know their favourite reports by number as well!

Coming up:
Next Wednesday at Microsoft, Adam Cogan at the .net user group will go over all the admin stuff..
I might go along and keep him in line and teach him a few tricks to do with incorporating this into SharePoint!

Also SQL Code Camp in Wagga Wagga is coming up this October so it should be quite interesting…

Regards,
Tom Bizannes
Microsoft Certified Professional
Databases and Office Development
Sydney, Australia

Integrating Reporting Services with SharePoint

Had fun trying this on a windows 2008 box.
Everything worked after hitting each bit a few times!
So important to get permissions set, root site collections set properly and IIS7 configured right before installing anything.

So the steps in order are:
Set up IIS7 with all the correct settings:

Common HTTP Features:
Static Content
Default Document
HTTP Redirection
Directory Browsing

Application Development:
ASP.Net
ISAPI Extension
ISAPI Filters

Security:
Windows Authentication

Tools:
IIS Metabase Management
IIS 6 WMI Management

Then make sure you set tcp and named pipes in the sql server surface area configuration tool for the remote connections.

Then install service 2 for sql server and the service pack for the service pack if it isn't up to version 9.0.3054

Then run the sharepoint reporting services msi file that integrates them noting this doesn't run on a windows 208 server unless you install a reg hack to run as admin or turn off the uac.

Then you need to go into the reporting services configuration tool to configure and that is where many get mixed up.
Reporting Services needs to use the same pool as sharepoint to integrate.

Everything finally fell into place except the reporting services configuration settings didn't show in the sharepoint admin application page.
Had to go to the _layouts pages instead.

When deploying your reports, the pc with report designer should also be service packed and then you get an extra option regarding sharepoint in your deployment options wording for your target folders etc.

http://servername:portno/_layouts/ReportServer/ReportServerSiteSettings.aspx
http://servername:portno/_layouts/ReportServer/ManageTrustedAccounts.aspx
http://servername:portno/_layouts/ReportServer/ReportServerSiteSettings.aspx?Settings=RS

Regards,
Tom Bizannes
Sydney, Australia
For Consulting click here:

Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing today along with Windows Vista SP1.

Now all the fun updating etc….

Think I’ll wait and see how many people have issues!

Windows Server 2008 was released to manufacturing today along with Windows Vista SP1. Good stuff.

Don’t you love how they’ll give everyone until April before windows update will clobber their pcs anyway?

Installing SQL 2005 on Vista or Windows 2008:

There have been some installations with sql 2005 without sql 2005 reporting services due to not adding some components in windows 2008 or vista.

Installing SQL 2005 on Vista or Windows 2008:

And any installs on Windows 2008 Server or Vista PCs won’t install reporting services 2005 unless you make sure you have added all the required internet components, not just IIS7.

You need IIS 6 compatibility, plus a lot of other components so read this article:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934164

You need to run the install as admin.

Install SQL server 2005 then the Sql Server 2005 sp2 and then the vista provisioning tool and Visual Studio sp1.

** All fun but easier than the alternative to uninstalling and then do the steps above and then re-attaching all databases….just because an install missed one step.