Display XML in SSRS

  • I have seen this problem brought up in forums but I have never seen an answer and since it has not been asked for a while I thought I would ask again.

    I have a table that stores XML as a varchar(max). I know I know this should be stored as XML but this is a product of a third party software for ERP solution.

    Any way the ERP system passes these XML code pages around and that is how something in Finance gets into HR in there system. Wow what fun hey.

    So every once in a while the XML page fails and is logged in the database under the error table for the appropriate system.

    I then get a call and have to provide the XML to the people who need to see it.

    I have tried to create a report many times to allow the users to do this themselves.

    The problem is no matter what I try SSRS displays the XML code as flat text. I need this to display as an xml document. why would SSRS not support such a feature when I can store XML as a data type?

    Hopefully there is some knoweldge developed out there for this or atleast someone has figured something out.

    Dan

    If only I could snap my figures and have all the correct indexes apear and the buffer clean and.... Start day dream here.

  • Just a couple of questions really, and a suggestion...

    Does the HR system pull the information in automatically directly from the report or does it pull it in from an outputted file (exported from SSRS)?

    I must admit I wouldn't use SSRS to do this at all although I haven't had the need. I would look at SSIS (it has an XML Task which might be just what you need) or even an proc which returns XML which your system can connect with.

  • There ae files although this process was not written with a great deal of common sense.

    I would love to be able to read the file and in fact my first thought was to just display the xml file.

    The problem is that the files are named with a key that does not relate to the data in the table in any way. The xml code itself is stored in the table when an error occurs and thus the reason I need to be able to simply display that code. we actually have a process in place now that does this with some limitations. We parse the xml code out inserting a Char(13) after each closeing tag. we can do this since the closing tag always ends with a ">+space" There are a few exceptions and it is not a perfect process but better than displaying on a single line. My hope however was to find a way to display it as a true xml format either by linking to a file or directly in SSRS.

    Dan

    If only I could snap my figures and have all the correct indexes apear and the buffer clean and.... Start day dream here.

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