Running Reporting Services Script from Visual Studio

Been playing around with Reporting services scripting a bit lately.

The one gaping flaw with the Report Project in Visual Studio is that it doesn't support multiple levels of folders. So if you have Report Manager organised with reports in different folders depending on the Department/Run Time/Category/etc... you'll to choose from some not so nice options,
1) For each folder in Report Manager that holds reports, create a corresponding Report Project in Visual Studio.
2) Create one Report Project in Visual Studio and after deployment use Report Manager to move the reports to the appropriate folder.

For some time I was thinking that the second option was pretty cool. I had a nice simple Report Project. All my datasources and report resources were located in one spot. However, now that I'm deploying and re-deploying reports on a day-to-day basis I've discovered that even this is a real drag.

So then I started looking into deploying the reports via script, it kinda works at the moment, but still needs some bugs ironed out. (I'll post it when it's ready). Then came the hassle of jumping from Visual Studio to the command prompt and back again. Trying to remember the correct syntax for the parameters, etc... It was quickly after this that I discovered the 'External Tools...' option in Visual Studio. Turned out to be a very, very simple to setup and is a joy to behold ;-)

Choose 'External Tools...' from the 'Tools' menu in Visual Studio then follow through the steps,
1. Click Add to create a new entry
2. Give it a name you'll recognise
3. Browse to the location of the RS.EXE application
4. Use the arguments to add the ItemPath for the -i parameter and include the URL for your Report Server for the -s parameter
5. Set the initial directory to the project directory, or whichever directory you choose.
6. Personally I keep the check box option off, but try the different options and see which works best for you.

Once everything has been setup click 'Apply' and you'll have a new option on the 'Tools' menu.
I have the RSS file included in my Reports solution under Miscellaneous files. When I want to deploy the reports I open the RSS file and choose the run the script via the newly menu option.

RSS Feeder a news reader and blogging tool

Since Synop has closed for business, I've been looking around for a new blogging tool.

Basically I'm looking for a News Reader/Aggregator that has blogging functionality built-in.

One such tool that hit my radar recently is RSS Feeder. This tool has a nice interface, can store feed items in Outlook, built-in blogging, pickup items from an Outlook folder and create weblog items and some other cool features. The author has also put together a comprehensive article over here

Talk like a pirate day

Dont forget ...

Damn testing centres ...

Failed the exam today though not for the want of trying to finish the exam.

The building the testing centre was located at was having construction work done. So unbeknowns to me they have re-located their testing services to a different building across the road.

To cut along story short after much fussing around trying to find my test booking they eventually advised that I should go across the road. This made me arrive about 20 minutes later than the booked time. The lady at the front desk was most understanding and mentioned that they had quite a few problems due to the construction. She got me all set up in a cubicle and I proceeded to mow through the questions.

After completing 31 of 42 questions, another guy came up to my cubicle and told me I shouldn't be doing the test because I arrived late. He then proceeded to exit the test and log me out of the system. From the timer I could see that I still had over one hour and 40 minutes to complete the final 11 questions. Let me tell you I was not happy, but my remonstrations went un-heard. The end result is that I ended up with a final score of 674, 16 less than required for a pass with 11 questions unanswered. NOT HAPPY JAN!!!!

Needless to say I will be following this up with Prometric.

Of glacial progress and other joys ...

Been rather busy lately and have finally got a small respite to allow a breath or two.
Things that have been keeping me occupied,

• Porting some of our reports from our current reporting product Cyberquery, over to SQL Reporting Services. A note to those of you wondering if Cyberquery is any good, it's one claim to fame that sets it apart from other reporting tools is that it natively connects to Progress databases. Other than that it is a very average offering in the reporting arena.
  
  I suppose it doesn't really help that the implementation that was provided to us consists of the Cyberquery report files, a bunch of Progress 4GL code, a small Progress database holding report batch details and summary data, some Windows batch files to manage the rendering of reports in batches and a Perl application to perform the email distribution.
  
  Thankfully this is all made vastly simpler with SQL Reporting Services. We just have a report on Reporting Services, a SQL Server database, (really just a collection of stored procedures to provide the report data ) and a single application that manages the rendering and distribution (see next point).
  
• Writing a C# console application to render and distribute the reports as PDF files. What has been a great excursion into the world of Web Services and .Net
  
• Fiddling with Reporting Services script files to automate the report deployment.
  
• Studying my a** off for my Master of Systems Development, got an exam for my third of sixteen subjects later today.
  
• Of course I always put in an appearence at my regular community haunts, the great SQLServerCentral.com and what will hopefully become the down-under equivalent Australian SQL Server User Group