Steven Wright Blog

I have recently deployed a new reporting solution using SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. I wanted to look into a solution to ensure that the first user, after reporting services had spun down its’ application pools, doesn't have to wait for them to be re-initiated. This so that I could avoid complaints about reporting services performance. I was looking for a simple solution to either stop reporting services clearing down the application pools or to find a way of speeding up the first request. I decided on an approach to speed up the first request made by a user. This was because I didn't want to make application settings changes in case other problems occurred. After searching for a method into speeding up reporting services application pools start-up I came across a useful PowerShell script. The script, which was for PowerShell V2, made use of the .Net class System.Net.WebRequest to make a request to the report manager. I made a copy of this script and applied some ...

The Scrum for Team System process template includes reports to help manage the progress of project.  The onus is on the team to run - by opening them - and review them.  This is the default behaviour of the Team Foundation Server which our process template built against, however as the Team Foundation Server platform uses SQL Server Reporting Services for its reporting software, the reports can actually be pushed out to the teams via e-mail.  I have mentioned how to do this for version 2.x, and for version 1.x the same steps can be applied, with the following post:  How to E-mail the Sprint Burndown Chart to yourself or your team. For version 3.0 (For which beta 2 is now available for download from the following link: http://scrumforteamsystem.com/cs/forums/4554/ShowPost.aspx ) things are a little different. Firstly, if not already configured, the Reporting Services server will need to will need to be set up to point to an SMTP server. This can be done by usi...

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 plac...

Within any application lifetime management methodology, the reports are a useful tool to help see how well , or not , the project is progressing.  Within the Scrum methodology the reports which are used for tracking progress are the burndown reports.  In the Scrum for Team Systems process templates for Team Foundation Server these reports are available to help with managing the project.  With a manual run burndown report when an unexpected trend in the burndown happens, there is an option to manually add an annotation.  This would help during a retrospective when talking about why the trend oddity occurred.  Within our previous versions of the Scrum for Team System templates our burndown reports would only show the end of each days aggregated totals.  Any unexpected totals would have to investigated to understand the underlying cause.  Previously this would have involved either using Team Foundation Explorer to review the history and comments; Using ...

I have been working with Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, since its first release, within many of my projects.  One of the biggest tasks, that I find with writing a report is the testing the reports and making sure the data that is displayed is correct.  My method of developing and testing reports is as follows: Write the queries, outside Reporting Services, for creating the report data set(s) with the parameters defined which will be configured within the report. Define the parameters that report data set would create and assign a valid value. Execute the queries. Inspect the results to make sure that they meet the expected results. Repeat with a new valid value or fix any issues. After one or two or even three passes that have worked then I take the queries and put them into report data sets. Then I define the report layout. Then I preview the report make sure it’s still correct Then I release to our te...

As mentioned in my previous blog post, there are some new reports available in the Scrum for Team System V3 Beta 1 Template. I would like to give a high level overview of the new reports as there will be full report guidance available with the template explaining in more detail how to use the reports. The new Diagnostic report isn’t really a new report, more of a spin off from another report. Version 2.x included a Version report that provided details about the status of the Team Foundation Server warehouse process. This covered information like: When the process last ran When the process finished loading data into the warehouse How often the warehouse process would run When the last time the cube was changed Team Foundation Server 2010 provides more information about the Team Foundation Server warehouse process, including: Is the warehouse blocked from running Is the OLAP processing blocked from running The last full process started and ended time The last incremental pro...

For the last few months I, with the help of fellow work colleague Kate Begley , have been working on the writing the reports for the Scrum for Team System V3 process template, which Beta 1 has been released and details are available from http://blogs.conchango.com/sfts/archive/2009/07/28/scrum-for-team-system-v3-beta-programme.aspx . There are a number of changes, from a reporting aspect, that have been introduced into Team Foundation Server 2010 platform and the Scrum for Team System V3 process template like: Warehouse schema changes; only supporting Reporting Services 2008; a sophisticated multi-team support model and new QA model. As a result the reports have been completely rewritten so there is a limited number in this beta release. However I would like to highlight some of the smaller updates that been applied to the reports to help readability / usability of the reports which are as follows: A reporting site folder structure has been created to make browsing the report...

For the Scrum for Team System project I have been focusing on the reports; I came across an issue which was due to the way the Reporting Services 2008 "automatic upgrade" feature upgraded our reports. The Scrum for Team System template contains over 20 reports all written for Reporting Services 2005. This was done because Team Foundation Server 2008 only worked on SQL Server 2005 and Reporting Services 2005. Then in August of 2008 Team Foundation Server 2008 Services Pack 1 was released which added support for the Team Foundation Server 2008 is to run on SQL Server 2008 platform. With Reporting Services 2008 there is a new reporting definition language schema. However reporting services does have backward compatibility method as describe below: The report server will validate report definition file against the included reference to the RDL namespace which specifies the version of the report definition schema that is used. The report is automatically upgraded the first...

A couple of colleagues of mine were working on a complicated reporting services project; they had one report which had a parameter which allowed a user to select multiple values of numbers, the problem they were facing was how pass the selected values into the query. They were looking for a way within SQL Server to split a string by a delimiter. As they were using a stored procedure to access the data and multiple value parameters, regardless of parameter type, are passed in as a string of comma separated values. One thing which they weren’t aware of was that with a multiple value parameter, the behaviour can differ between how the data is being retrieved i.e.: stored procedure or embed sql statement. If the data set is using direct query to gather the data then the multi value parameter can be used in the query with a IN clause like so: Where column1 in (@pMultiValueParam) What happens is that before the query is sent to the SQL Server the query the report server substitutes...

As I have mention in a previous blog entry I’ve been heavily involved in the Scrum for Team System process template since the start of version 2 and have written the majority of the reports. I have faced, and still do, some challenges while doing this. Some of them have been around how to display the data within reporting services 2005. Now with the release of Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1, release in August, this enables Team Foundation Server 2008 to be used on a SQL Server 2008 environment. This will make some of reporting challenges I faced with reporting services 2005 disappear. This will due to major changes that been made to reporting services 2008 like Tablix control and wider Dundas chart controls. Within this release we have made a patch which will update some of the reports for reporting services 2008. This to fix some of the reporting services 2005 Patterns and Recipes which became visible. I am currently working looking at how Scrum for Team System can mak...

As I have mention in another blog posts; I’ve been heavily involved in the Scrum for Team System process template since the start of version 2 and to coincide with the release of version 2.2; I would like bring your attention to a new tool, which I help to developed, that has been added to this release. I started creating this tool due to some feedback we got from our beta users for “ TaskBoard for Team system ” tool. The request was to add a demonstration mode into the application which would show things like swimming lane-view and the following reports: Sprint burndown chart; Sprint cumulative flow as these can be view within the application. The reason for the request was create the sense of: "Look guys, this is what we are working on, and this is how we are doing", throughout the day, not only during the scrum meetings. This also happen a lot within our projects which they do something similar as well. Another reason for the tool to separate from the Task Board applic...

I have been working on a POC using SQL Server 2008 and Google Maps.  The POC was to use Geo Spatial technology to illustrate our Geo Spatial data easily.   I will talk about this in more detail in another blog post as I would like talk about a problem I faced while creating this POC.  The problem I faced was how could I get my Geo Spatial data, which was stored within SQL Server 2008 using the new geography data type, into  "static" HTML? So I thought that SQL Server HTTP Endpoints for SQL would be great thing to use to solve this problem.   As all I was after was xml document to stream over HTTP.   There was no business logic needed so all the .Net would be is just another layer acting as go between.  Also I didn’t what to waste time on what code which wouldn’t have added any value. So I created my stored procedure to produce an XML document that I found usable by using the For XML Path.  Then I started to look at h...