adding keywords to SSRS report metadata?

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adding keywords to SSRS report metadata?

pietlinden

SSC Guru

Points: 63503
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December 18, 2018 at 10:13 pm

#369727

Got a dumb question...
Say I have a ton of SSRS reports (you know a good 300+)... Is there an easy way to add tags to the SSRS metadata so that a user could search by these tags?
(Yeah, I know this is cringeworthy, but in Access I could right-click on my report, and show the properties and then add a note the the Description property.... Can I do something similar to an SSRS report and then search by it, or do I have to create a table of (ReportName, Keyword) and search that way?

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Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182912 More actions · Answer 1

pietlinden - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 10:13 PM
Got a dumb question...
Say I have a ton of SSRS reports (you know a good 300+)... Is there an easy way to add tags to the SSRS metadata so that a user could search by these tags?
(Yeah, I know this is cringeworthy, but in Access I could right-click on my report, and show the properties and then add a note the the Description property.... Can I do something similar to an SSRS report and then search by it, or do I have to create a table of (ReportName, Keyword) and search that way?

Quick thought, you could either search the REPORTSERVER.DBO.CATALOG table directly or parse the content into a report/keyword table.
😎

pietlinden SSC Guru Points: 63503 More actions · Answer 2

Is it possible to append anything to the Property column without corrupting the report? Right now, it looks like this:

<Properties>
<Language>en-US</Language> <HasUserProfileQueryDependencies>False</HasUserProfileQueryDependencies> <HasUserProfileReportDependencies>False</HasUserProfileReportDependencies> <PageHeight>279.4</PageHeight>
<PageWidth>215.9</PageWidth>
<TopMargin>25.4</TopMargin>
<BottomMargin>25.4</BottomMargin>
<LeftMargin>25.4</LeftMargin>
<RightMargin>25.4</RightMargin>
</Properties>

Is it kosher to create new properties like
<keywords>
<keyword>Finance</keyword>
<keyword>Budget</keyword>
<keyword>2018</keyword>
</keywords>
since this is just basic XML?

and then use XQuery find reports with the one or more of the selected keywords? Of course, I could just do something radical like test it out... you know, clone an existing report, and then tweak it..
Or I could just grab the ItemID from the Catalog table and then create a child table and put the keywords in there...

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182912 More actions · Answer 3

pietlinden - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 11:09 PM
Is it possible to append anything to the Property column without corrupting the report? Right now, it looks like this:
<Properties>
<Language>en-US</Language> <HasUserProfileQueryDependencies>False</HasUserProfileQueryDependencies> <HasUserProfileReportDependencies>False</HasUserProfileReportDependencies> <PageHeight>279.4</PageHeight>
<PageWidth>215.9</PageWidth>
<TopMargin>25.4</TopMargin>
<BottomMargin>25.4</BottomMargin>
<LeftMargin>25.4</LeftMargin>
<RightMargin>25.4</RightMargin>
</Properties>
Is it kosher to create new properties like
<keywords>
<keyword>Finance</keyword>
<keyword>Budget</keyword>
<keyword>2018</keyword>
</keywords>
since this is just basic XML?
and then use XQuery find reports with the one or more of the selected keywords? Of course, I could just do something radical like test it out... you know, clone an existing report, and then tweak it..
Or I could just grab the ItemID from the Catalog table and then create a child table and put the keywords in there...

One has to make certain that it does not break the XSD, which will render the report useless. My thought is to find unused attributes or elements and add those with the keywords.
😎

pietlinden SSC Guru Points: 63503 More actions · Answer 4

I guess I'll try to play around with it over Christmas or something... after I rebuild my poor laptop. Thanks!

Eirikur Eiriksson SSC Guru Points: 182912 More actions · Answer 5

pietlinden - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 3:07 PM
I guess I'll try to play around with it over Christmas or something... after I rebuild my poor laptop. Thanks!

Ping me over the namespace URIs and a sample report and I'll have a look, don't have an SSRS instance at hand.
😎

pietlinden SSC Guru Points: 63503 More actions · Answer 6

I think I get it... Here's a tiny subset of the columns in the Catalog table:
SELECT ItemID , c.[Name] as ReportName FROM dbo.Catalog c WHERE c.Type = 2;

So if I used ItemID, I could create a child table to that and add keywords that way.
CREATE TABLE ReportKeywords( ItemID UNIQUEIDENTIFIER, Keyword VARCHAR(100) CONSTRAINT pkRptKeywords PRIMARY KEY (ItemID, Keyword), CONSTRAINT fkItemID FOREIGN KEY (ItemID) REFERENCES Catalog(ItemID)); );

Then I guess I could write a report to search for keywords... =)...