Documenting SSRS RDL files

• itwhiz

  Mr or Mrs. 500

  Points: 531

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  March 25, 2013 at 10:55 am

  #275552

  I'm working in SSRS2008 R2 and I have several projects, which in turn have several report definitions held within them.

  Each rdl may have many datasets, tablix, matrix definitions detailed within it.

  My problem is documentation! I need to document all the datasets, tablix/matrix names, stored procedures etc

  Is there an easy way of extracting this information and creating either an excel workbook using VBA, or detailing them back into a SQL2008 table that I can then use SSRS to produce the report?

  I have read a similar post that suggests using the reportserver database to get this information from, but if the rdl hasn't been deployed yet it won't be in the database.

  Any help would be much appreciated as it will save me going through over 150 rdl's manually and writing down the information.

  Thanks

• Ray M

  SSC-Insane

  Points: 21093

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  March 27, 2013 at 11:32 am

  #1601287

  RDL's are just xml files.

  For example this will get you the data sets information used in your report. You can use this to insert into a table, or copy paste results wherever you want.

  Using your local sql server.

  IF NOT EXISTS (SELECT * FROM tempdb.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.Tables WHERE TABLE_NAME LIKE '#t%')

  CREATE TABLE #T (IntCol int, XmlCol xml);

  ELSE TRUNCATE TABLE #t

  GO

  INSERT INTO #T(XmlCol)

  SELECT * FROM OPENROWSET(

  BULK 'C:\Users\<YourUserName>\Documents\Visual Studio 2008\Projects\Test\Test\MyTestReport.rdl',

  SINGLE_BLOB) AS x;

  DECLARE @idoc int

  DECLARE @doc XML

  SELECT TOP 1 @Doc = xmlCol

  FROM #T t

  EXEC sp_xml_preparedocument @idoc OUTPUT, @doc, '<root xmlns:n="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2008/01/reportdefinition" xmlns:rd="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQLServer/reporting/reportdesigner"/>'

  SELECT

  DataSourceName

  ,Name AS DataSetName

  ,ISNULL(CommandType,'Text') AS CommandType

  ,CommandText

  ,DataField AS DataSetFieldName

  ,TypeName AS FieldDataType

  FROM OPENXML (@idoc, '/n:Report/n:DataSets/n:DataSet/n:Fields/n:Field',2)

  WITH (Name varchar(50) '../../@Name'

  ,DataSourceName varchar(100) '../../n:Query/n:DataSourceName'

  ,CommandType varchar(100)'../../n:Query/n:CommandType'

  ,CommandText varchar(1000)'../../n:Query/n:CommandText'

  ,DataField VARCHAR(50) 'n:DataField'

  ,TypeName VARCHAR(50) 'rd:TypeName'

  )

  EXEC sp_xml_removedocument @idoc

  This is a sample how to pull info from a tablix. However the structure changes dramatically when you add row and column groups, so its not a one size fits all type query.

  SELECT

  Name

  ,AttribName

  ,ToolTip

  ,DataField

  ,ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY CASE WHEN AttribName LIKE 'hdr%' THEN AttribName ELSE 'z' + AttribName END) AS Ord

  FROM --OPENXML (@idoc, '/n:Report/n:ReportSections/n:ReportSection/n:Body/n:ReportItems/n:Tablix/n:TablixColumnHierarchy/n:TablixMembers/n:TablixMember/n:Group',2)

  OPENXML (@idoc, '/n:Report/n:Body/n:ReportItems/n:Tablix/n:TablixBody/n:TablixRows/n:TablixRow/n:TablixCells/n:TablixCell/n:CellContents/n:Textbox',2)

  WITH (Name varchar(10) '../../../../../../../@Name'

  ,AttribName varchar(100) '@Name'

  ,ToolTip VARCHAR(500) 'n:ToolTip'

  ,DataField VARCHAR(1000) 'n:Paragraphs/n:Paragraph/n:TextRuns/n:TextRun/n:Value'