Tech4Him – Technology with Integrity

Sample Income over Time (Current + Historical) where a tooltip on datapoints would be useful.

Wow. Big disappointment for me today. I’ve been hitting my head against a brick wall for the last 1.5 hrs trying to find the Tooltip property in a Dundas Chart for Reporting Services object for each series data point.

Seemed like a simple request since the built in Chart object in SSRS 2008 has a marker tooltip property. Well boys and girls, the short answer is “no, you can’t.”

According to this article, Dundas is stating that the limitation is on Microsoft and affects all custom reporting objects.

Boy, that’s not how I anticipated ending my day after our organization shelled out for the Dundas dashboard bundle. Might just have to go back to the Microsoft chart control for some reports. Disappointing to say the least.

Popularity: 25% [?]

SSRS Failed Subscription Notifications « Jeff Prom’s SQL Server Weblog

Great little query against your ReportServer db that you can create a report from to see subscription failures. A little tweaking and creativity and you’ve got the makings of a set of subscription management reports.

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Popularity: 15% [?]

As we have posted about before, we are getting close to our upgrade and consolidation from SQL Server 2000 and 2005 environments into a single SQL Server 2008 environment. In preparation for this we found ourselves also needing to change our SMTP settings for SSRS to a non-default setup. Hopefully this might save you a few minutes if you find yourself in a similar situation.

Does your mail delivery look like this?

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Popularity: 65% [?]

Are you new to SQL Server Reporting Services? Want to know some more before investing too much in additional training? Just plain curious?

Below is a list of some of the better video tutorials we’ve found on the web.

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Popularity: 61% [?]

Week of Warehousing Webinar Series – SQL Server Central

Join SQL Server authors and MVPs for a week of warehousing and get the latest on Microsoft Business Intelligence inside your environment. If you are in any stage of a data warehouse design, administration or planning you won’t want to miss out on this free “week of warehousing” webinar series,

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Popularity: 10% [?]

Yes, okay, call me a dolt for having to take five minutes to find this but I’ve seen this question asked so many places I figured I’d throw it up here.

In Visual Studio 2008 when working on a SQL Server Reporting Services report, you may find that you want to change the order in which the parameters are listed to the end user. Or perhaps you are using unnamed parameters, such as with ODBC, and need to change the order for token replacement in your query. Well in 2008 this is not where you expected it to be if coming from 2005.

To start with, see if you have the Report Data region showing. If not, go to the toolbar and click View –> Report Data as shown below.

Now, find the parameters section and expand it. Pick a parameter that needs re-ordering. Click and highlight the parameter. Now a little further up you will see a set of up and down arrows. Use these to move the parameter, re-order the list of parameters.

I know, too simple right? Well, sometimes the obvious things are easily overlooked.

Blessings to you!

Popularity: 27% [?]

The MSDN Webcast from September 8, 2008 is the third in a series entitled “SQL Server 2008 Tips & Tricks” focuses on Reporting Services 2008.

Presentation and slide content by IT Mentors

1. SSRS 2008 Architecture/Runtime
2. Configuration
3. New Controls
a. Tablix
b. Gauges and Indicators
4. Deployment

### Benefits of Eliminating IIS from the SSRS Architecture
* Easier configuration
* IIS settings for other applications impact SSRS
* Better resource management
* IIS designed for static or dynamic HTML pages, not report execution for large reports to many concurrent users.
* Memory management easier to implement outside of IIS
* Consolidation of two services into one
* Communication process between services eliminated
* More efficient allocation of memory across server
* Elimination of deployment obstacles
* SQL Server DBAs lacking IIS skills
* IT policies prevent IIS and SQL Server on same server

### Architecture
* HTTP Listener
* Uses HTTP.SYS directly from the operating system
* Accepts requests directed to the configured URL and port
* Authentication Layer
* Confirms identity associated with request
* Supports Windows, Basic, or anonymous Access with a custom authentication
* Application Domains
* Provide a front-end component with Report Manager
* Process reports interactively with Report Server Web service
* Support scheduled operations with background processing
* Application Domain Management
* Replaces IIS functionality

Notes: Speaker does not discuss the complications that running IIS and SSRS 2008 on the same server. Instead he talks about how they both can run on the same server. Might want to be sure you understand the complications that can arise from both on the same server, especially when it comes to SSL needs.

### Configuration
* Memory Management
* Disabling Features

Notes: Speaker states the obvious about the importance of these items. Disabling features = reducing surface area.

### Memory Management
* Memory Broker monitors and responds to memory pressure fluctuations
* Memory events trigger switch from RAM to file system cache as needed
* Configurable thresholds determine report server response to memory pressure changes

Notes: Good simplistic explanation of these by the speaker. Might want to research a bit more if you really need to tweak memory optimization for peak performance.

* Low Memory Pressure
* Current requests continue
* New Requests accepted
* Background low priority
* Medium Memory Pressure
* Current requests continue
* New requests _might_ be accepted
* Memory allocations reduced for all applications
* Background items get the largest reduction
* High Memory Pressure
* Current requests continue
* No new requests accepted

Notes: Good explanation and slide for this concept.

### Configure Memory Settings

Notes: Speaker shows you the what to change in the config file but neglects to say which config files is being changed and where it is located. The correlating MSDN article on this topic is located here.

Information on the RSReportServer.config file can also be found on MSDN.

### Disabling Features
* Report Manager
* RSReportServer.config
* IsReportManagerEnabled
* On Demand Processing
* RSReportServer.config
* IsWebServiceEnabled
* Scheduled Events and Report Delivery
* RSReportServer.config
* IsSchedulingService
* IsNotificationService
* IsEventService
* Report Builder
* SQL Server Management Studio
* Server Properties
* Report Server Windows Service
* SQL Server Configuration Manager

Notes: One might want to consider the “Why?” on each of these to determine appropriate use cases for enabling or disabling. Now the speaker shows where the config file is.

Demos were done for memory configuration settings and the Tablix control.

Lots of good gauges and indicators available thanks to the new Dundas obtained controls.

Finally discussion about the rs command line tool for deployment.

Popularity: 47% [?]