The Report Builder
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Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at temp
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Great point!
Totally agree on the developer's "lack of interest" in this tool, and this is understandable.
Why would you spend time on something that you would not use yourself?
Especially when you are LEARNING a million things a day,
and trying to grasp the load of information you are being exposed to during a "developer training"...
But I think as the SQL Reports get used more and more, the "Power User" will get into that.
Not just this particular product, but I run across many things
that I believe eventually will make the "Power User" segment in the IT education industry stronger, and more popular...
More training sessions specifically tailored for the people that are not developers,
but savvy computer users that like to "dig in"...
And I think selling this particular tool as an "Add On", or charging some extra for it might help grabbing some attention...
Good job on pointing that out.
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I get an "Authentication Error" when I try and run Report Builder on my system. It looks like there is some configuration that needs to take place on the server in order to access it.
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms365173.aspx
Maybe the author could add a paragraph about that.
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This is exactly what I've been hoping for, since I have a set of users that are constantly asking for ad-hoc reports (in response to external client requests). We are in the process of installing SQL Server 2005, so I'm looking forward to checking out Report Builder. I do wish the article had gone into a little more detali!
Here there be dragons...,Steph Brown
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Stephanie, you might want to check out this article:
Generate Ad-hoc Reports with Microsoft Reporting Services 2005
http://www.devx.com/dbzone/Article/28047#rateThisContentLink
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I have looked at Report Builder and run some demos. The product is easy to use and the report model helps the user. The problem is the user must be connected to SQL Server to use the report.
My goal in using Report Builder was to distribute data to the user with a limited function report writer. For example, the last 12 financial statements for the divison of a company. The user could export to Excel, select a month of data or select a group of accounts. The user would probably install the report on a laptop computer.
Currently, the solution to this problem remains Excel.
Bob Neal
Robert Neal -
We'll have more coverage of Report Builder soon I think. As far as connected, absolutely thats the limitation. Not unreasonable I think all in all, but constricting at times. Definitely it makes sense to use Report Builder to pull the data into Excel where they can do more analysis, the big win is that IT doesnt have to pull the data for them.
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The big chore I've come across with Report Builder is translating all the database fields into recognisable form for end users eg: only after a few years working with this database, I've come to recognise the cryptic a-re-dte ( not my choice in naming conventions
) is the Actual Receipt Date field, as opposed to re-en-dte which is the Receipt Entry Date field.It would also be good to see a few more report templates available. After using the Visual Studio Report Designer to produce some promising reports with Detail, Summary, Matrix and Graph all on one report its a little bit of a come-down to be limited to such basic report templates.
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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After spending several evenings working out security issues I finally got the Report Builder working only to discover that my views did not make it from my "view" to my "model". I tried creating a simple report off a base table but got a empty result set. Since the sql is not available to the user there is no easy way to debug the problem.
I'm sure there are some developers who have had success implementing this tool but it just doesn't seem ready for production. Maybe I had exceedingly high expectations for this tool but there have been similar power user tools around like this for over a decade that have been easier to configure and use. I think I'll have to wait for the next release and try again.
Leif Peterson
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Leif
Without any idea of your environment or setup I'd take a stab at saying that the report you built returned zero rows due to Report Builders implicit use of inner joins when you have more than one table in the report. Am I close?
I'm close to putting our "end-user" reporting project on hold due to lack of functionality. The current incarnation of report builder provides pretty much same functionality as our current antiquated reporting system. It does add drag and drop functionality, but not much else.
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface -
Leif,
It is possible to get the SQL by editing the web config as follows:
Before:
<add name="Components" value="all,RunningJobs:3,SemanticQueryEngine:2,SemanticModelGenerator:2" />
To:
<add name="Components" value="all,RunningJobs:3,SemanticQueryEngine:4,SemanticModelGenerator:2" />
Of course you can always just use Profiler to see what is being sent over. It does sound like something wrong with the model definition more than the tool.
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Hi Phil
I was able to rename the fields in the Report Builder.
When you create the Report Model, you can right click and rename the fields as per your choice and then deply the model.
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I'd love to deploy this to my users save for one simple fact: I canot find any basic documentation on how to use it!
I've been tinkering with it and have run into very simple but yet annoying issues.
For instance, I've created my report model, deployed it, etc. The list of entities is displayed in the entity box. When I choose a field of one entity to add to the report, the other entities disappear.
The pain in the a$$ is that I have YET to figure out how to be able to view all the entities again!!
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I don't think I was inferring that I couldn't rename the fields, I was just saying that the task was a big chore in building the model.
There are no tools/wizards to help you accomplish the task. If you have the same field in six tables you have to do it six times. Would be much better if it had a data dictionary, or refactoring like there is in Visual Studio 2005, and you only had to rename the field once.
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Colt 45 - the original point and click interface
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