Re: SQL Server report scheduling
Hi Greg, I could be wrong but I don't think you needed the Enterprise version to get subscriptions. Standard edition is enough and is significantly cheaper. Greg On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote: Folks, our customer needs a facility to generate reports via calendar schedules and then distribute them to lists of email recipients. For example, on the first of each month, monthly summary reports with filtering arguments for different customers and departments would be generated and each would be emailed to one or more related people. They currently do this by hand and it's a growing burden on the staff. One of us discovered that SQL Server with Reporting Serviceshttp://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159106.aspx(SSRS) seems to do everything we need, so we upgraded to SQL Server Express with Advanced Tools (and reporting) and ran some experiments to make RDL server-side reports and use the web interface to publish and generate them. This all works, and we got excited, but then discovered that subscription reports http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155911(v=sql.90).aspxare not a part of SQL Express editions, so we don't get the facility to schedule and distribute reports unless our customer upgrades to the SQL Server Enterprise edition which is about $27000 per processor. So we have to tell the customer to buy SQL Server Enterprise and we learn how to use SSRS, or we find some other way of creating the subscription/schedule facility. Our current preference is for the latter if there is a way of programmatically generating the RDL reports stored on the server. If we can generate the reports, then we're quite happy to wrap it in a scheduler (NCron, Quartz .NET, etc) and it's easy to send email attachments. That way, SQL Server holds all the report definitions and data, and our code schedules and distributes the reports. Does anyone know if there is an API or service into SSRS to allow us to generate the RDL reports? Any other general comments on this matter would be welcome. Cheers, Greg
RE: SQL Server report scheduling
Officially it's required for data-driven subscriptions but not for standard subscriptions. However, there are ways around it: http://sqlblog.com/blogs/greg_low/archive/2008/08/13/data-driven-subscriptio ns-in-sql-server-2005-standard-edition.aspx Regards, Greg From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Greg Kennedy Sent: Wednesday, 16 March 2011 8:31 AM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: SQL Server report scheduling Hi Greg, I could be wrong but I don't think you needed the Enterprise version to get subscriptions. Standard edition is enough and is significantly cheaper. Greg On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 8:04 AM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote: Folks, our customer needs a facility to generate reports via calendar schedules and then distribute them to lists of email recipients. For example, on the first of each month, monthly summary reports with filtering arguments for different customers and departments would be generated and each would be emailed to one or more related people. They currently do this by hand and it's a growing burden on the staff. One of us discovered that SQL Server with Reporting Services http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159106.aspx (SSRS) seems to do everything we need, so we upgraded to SQL Server Express with Advanced Tools (and reporting) and ran some experiments to make RDL server-side reports and use the web interface to publish and generate them. This all works, and we got excited, but then discovered that subscription reports http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms155911(v=sql.90).aspx are not a part of SQL Express editions, so we don't get the facility to schedule and distribute reports unless our customer upgrades to the SQL Server Enterprise edition which is about $27000 per processor. So we have to tell the customer to buy SQL Server Enterprise and we learn how to use SSRS, or we find some other way of creating the subscription/schedule facility. Our current preference is for the latter if there is a way of programmatically generating the RDL reports stored on the server. If we can generate the reports, then we're quite happy to wrap it in a scheduler (NCron, Quartz .NET, etc) and it's easy to send email attachments. That way, SQL Server holds all the report definitions and data, and our code schedules and distributes the reports. Does anyone know if there is an API or service into SSRS to allow us to generate the RDL reports? Any other general comments on this matter would be welcome. Cheers, Greg
RE: SQL Server report scheduling
Thanks Greg L, this is very interesting indeed. I've passed your article link onto the other guys who are more deeply into SQL internals so they can investigate. I now have to investigate Hoss' hint that I can programmatically invoke SSRS reports via a web service. I have a 27MB 770 page PDF book titled Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services by Teo Lachev. Chapter 15 is titled Reporting for .NET Clients, so maybe some good news for us will be in there. If I find anything startling or useful at the end of this research I'll let you all know. Greg K
Re: SQL Server report scheduling
On Wed, Mar 16, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Greg Keogh g...@mira.net wrote: Thanks Greg L, this is very interesting indeed. I've passed your article link onto the other guys who are more deeply into SQL internals so they can investigate. I now have to investigate Hoss' hint that I can programmatically invoke SSRS reports via a web service. Sorry, more info here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms152787.aspx I have a 27MB 770 page PDF book titled Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services by Teo Lachev. Chapter 15 is titled Reporting for .NET Clients, so maybe some good news for us will be in there. If I find anything startling or useful at the end of this research I'll let you all know. Greg K
