03Sep 2010 by Grant Fritchey 5 Comments

Recursive Hiearchies in Reporting Services

Uncategorized
I am not a Reporting Services guru and nor do I play one on TV. I am however forced to be all things Microsoft Data where I work. So I frequently find myself stretching way beyond my abilities. I just had to get a report running that feeds from a web service and has a recursive hiearchy with customized aggregation on multiple fields with drill down to a different set of details. Yeah, through the internet I can see the SSRS monsters rolling their eyes at the ease of this task. But for us mere mortals it was work. Since I spent so much time learning how to do it, I thought I'd share. XML as a Source First, because we have a very paranoid (and appropriately so) group of…
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14Jun 2010 by Grant Fritchey 3 Comments

Maps in Reports!

Spatial Data
I've been playing with SQL Server 2008 R2 for quite a while in the CTP's and what not. But, I hadn't made a concerted effort to look at the new version of Reporting Services... HUGE mistake. There are a number of, not insubstantial, updates to Reporting Services that, probably, are the primary selling points of 2008 R2. The big one, for me, was the incorporation of mapping directly into reports. Did I say big? I'm sorry, I meant, enormous, gigantic, galactic, really, really important... Why you ask? I work for an insurance company. We insure factories, warehouses, that sort of thing. Funny bit of information about a factory, when floods, high wind or earthquakes come calling, they just don't seem to be able to get out of the way adequately. Weird, huh?…
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