SSWUG Free Expo Event: Real-World SharePoint Administration
Today from 9 a.m. – 1 p.m. PST
Be ready if you signed up for the SharePoint Administration Expo today…It starts at 9am Pacific Standard Time
DBTechCon – Spring 2011
The SSWUG Spring 2011 virtual conference is quickly coming together. You can go to the registration page and see profiles for presenters, and summaries for the sessions to be presented. Without a doubt, this will be the largest virtual conference in the information technology industry. Access more than 70 sessions from well seasoned professionals with in-depth instruction on technologies such as SQL Server, SharePoint, .Net, Business Intelligence and much more. Register any time from now to April 19th. There are early registration discounts for those who register early. Go to the Registration page for more details and to get signed up right away.
$$SWYNK$$
Featured Article(s)
Is your database just growing?
I think the database designs that are not optimal are just that… not optimal, they may have met the needs at the time they were created. They may have been the best designs for that exact situation.
Featured White Paper(s)
Why and How You Should Find and Fix Index Fragmentation
In a high-volume database you need frequent critical maintenance. If you skip this important task, index fragmentation may ca… (read more)
Custom Reports in SSMS
Yesterday I talked about some of the standard reports that ship with SQL Server Management Studio. If you have looked at the fly out menu for reports you probably noticed an option for Custom Reports. Custom Reports are, well, reports that you, or others you trust, have developed that are not part of the canned products shipped with SSMS.
Custom reports consist of an RDL (Report Definition Language) file that you can create in BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio). BIDS allows you to define reports for Reporting Services that follow the standard RDL open report definition language developed by Microsoft. You don’t have to install reporting services in order to run these reports.
Using a custom report in SSMS is not as full featured as executing an RDL in Reporting Services or another tool. There are a lot of restrictions. Parameters are limited, no sub-reports are allowed, and a number of other restrictions. However, if you have queries that you find yourself executing over and over, this is a nice way to package them in some instances.
As with any report running against your database, it will have an impact on the system performance…so, be careful what you do. If it uses a lot of resources, takes a long time to run, or blocks other processes, you may need to find another option for your report.
Here is an MSDN link with more detailed information about custom reports in SSMS. This link documents a lot of the restrictions you will find in your custom report designs. This MSDN Link provides a step by step how to create a custom report using BIDS.
Also, I found it helpful to run a Google search on "CUSTOM REPORTS IN SQL SERVER MANAGEMENT STUDIO".
If you are comfortable with creating Reporting Services reports you should find this quite easy and useful.
What do you think about this feature of SSMS? Are you using the standard reports or creating your own custom reports. Drop me a note and let me know how this works in your world.
Cheers,
Ben