My Adventures in Codeplex

-

In October 2009 I created 2 codeplex projects which I would to tell you about:

SQL Server Reporting Services MSBuild Tasks (ssrsmsbuildtasks)

A few years ago I created some tasks for MSBuild to help deploy reports for my project, details can be found here,  since then my tasks have been re-used in a few other projects within my company.  However lately we have been doing a few projects which have made use of Reporting Services integrated mode with SharePoint, which meant that my tasks were unusable as they only work with a native mode report server.

So I have been updating them to include support for an integrated mode report server.  Also before I added the integrated mode support I took some time to rewrite my original native mode tasks as well.  The re-writing of the tasks includes some improved understanding of MSBuild by making more use of Item Groups and metadata for setting of report server properties of the report items being deployed. 

I placed the tasks within codeplex as I needed a better way of sharing my tasks other than through the blog post.  Also using the task is helpful in getting the your reporting project integrated with any continuous build of your project.  Another way they can help is with automating unit testing of your reporting project which I have talked about how to do from a previous post.

The SQL Server Reporting Services MSBuild Tasks are available from the following URL: http://ssrsmsbuildtasks.codeplex.com/

Server Reporting Services Slide Shower (ssrsslideshower)

While working on our Scrum for Team System process templates for Team Foundation Server (http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com) I created a useful tool.  The tool helps to show reports that are important to a scrum team in a sort slide show presentation, more details can be found through this previous post.

While writing the tool most of the mechanics of the tool doesn’t depend on Team Foundation Server or our Scrum template.  Also I thought it would be a useful tool for people who wish to demo any reports that are within their reporting services infrastructure.  So I have removed the dependences of Team Foundation Server and our Scrum Template. 

I have plans to improve the tool, within my limits of coding knowledge, to allow reports parameters values or labels to be set as it renders the reports within the slide show. I also plan to get it working with a integrated report server as well.  However my ssrsmsbuildtasks project has taken most of my time but over the next few week I plan to start making my changes to this project.

I placed the project on codeplex because within our Scrum for Team System V3 template for Team Foundation Server 2010, which beta 2 is now available from this link,  we have dropped the inclusion of this tool and plan to release it within codeplex.  This is  mainly because it was a value add tool and not needed as part of the process template. Also the changes that were made to template and the reports, which now don’t have clear defaults for our report parameters which fit into the my improvements plans that I mention above.   

The SQL Server Reporting Services Slide Shower is available from the following URL: http://ssrsslideshower.codeplex.com/

Comments

John Dhom said…
Hi Steven... have used your ssrsmsbuildtasks on several projects, good stuff.

I've posted a question on CodePlex regarding uploading images. I'm trying to use AddResource to accomplish this. I get the following error: " Reporting error UploadResource: The method or operation is not implemented."

http://ssrsmsbuildtasks.codeplex.com/discussions/265046

Any help/direction appreciated. I've looked at the sources and webservice api and have been unable to determine if AddResource (aka CreateCatalogItem ItemType="Resource") is what I should be using.

Thanks,
/jhd
13/7/11 21:27
John Dhom said…
ok, I think logging in threw away my comment... grr. Is short...

Love the tasks, used them on several projects.

Current project reports use image files in the report directory. Tried using 'AddResource' to upload the images. Is this a correct usage? I get the following error:

Reporting error UploadResource: The method or operation is not implemented.

Also posted in codeplex discussion (which isn't very active). http://ssrsmsbuildtasks.codeplex.com/discussions/265046

Any help/direction appreciated.

/jhd
13/7/11 21:32
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Azure SQL Server IaaS SSIS: A required privilege is not held by the client

-
Image
As mention in a previous post, we are using Azure SQL Server IaaS to help our transition to the cloud. The main reason for this is how some of our SSIS projects, which we inherited, were created. Some were using SSIS to manage the transactions, which uses MSDTC not supported in Azure. Use extra .Net libraries to read JSON and office files; external programs to do file operations like decompression. Migration timelines and priorities we didn't have time to refactor these projects. While ago we started to deploy our SSIS projects to our Azure SQL Server IaaS virtual machine, a Windows 2019 server with SQL Server 2019, to get the following error: SSIS Deployment Error 6522 "A required privilege is not held by the client". We able to resolve our problem by using the steps we found in the following blog posts: System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: A required privilege is not held by the client while Deploying SSIS Project | Microsoft Docs . Fixing SQL 2012 SSIS Deployment Err
Read more

SSIS File handle leak in For Each Loop

-
I am currently working on a project which needs to load over a 1000 xml files. The files are stored across 10 subfolders. I am using a foreach loop with a file enumerator, which is configured at the top of the folder structure and traverses the subfolders. This loops through the files, load the data and then moves the file to another folder. The package executes fine for a few 100 files but then hangs; this happens after a different number of processed files each time the package is run. While trying to resolve the problem we ran performance counters and noticed that the number open handles increased significantly just about the time Dtexec looked like it had hanged and DTexec also then started taking a lot of the cpu processing time. Update: I put this on the Microsoft forums and got a intresting answer back See Here ; There seems to be a memory leak with foreach loop which should be fixed in sp1.
Read more

Cannot update a database that has been registered as a data-tier application

-
Within SQL Server 2008 R2 a new feature was introduced, which was the data-tier application database. This feature allow developers / database administrators to package a database schema so that it could be deployed to any other database server and versioned. More about this feature can be found here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee240739(v=sql.105).aspx or http://dacguy.wordpress.com/ This feature has been included, as I have just found out, to previous versions: SQL Server 2005 via Services Pack 4 and 2008 via Services Pack 2. However SQL Server Management Studio, for SQL Server 2008, hasn't been updated with the tools for the new feature, you have to use the SQL Server 2008 R2 version. The reason for including the support to the previous version might have something to do with the release of the new SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT), the replacement to visual studio database professional, which uses DAC Packs and the framework to deploy a database. I have been using the
Read more