SSRS

How does rise of Power BI & Tableau affect SSRS?

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It does affect SSRS adoption but SSRS (sql server reporting service) still has a place as long as there’s need for printer-friendly reporting and self-service vendors don’t have a good solution to meet this need.

Also, SSRS is great for automating operational reports that sends out emails with raw data (list of customers, products, sales transaction etc).

I advocate an analytics strategy where we think about satisfying data needs using “self-service”-first (Power BI, tableau, qlik) but if thats not the optimal solution (for cases like need to print it, I just need you to send me raw data in excel, etc) then I’ll mark it as SSRS project. And this architecture is supported by a central data model (aka operational data store, data mart, data warehouse) which makes it much easier to swap in/out any reporting tools that we need and we are not locked in by one vendor.

About 10–20% data requests that I see are SSRS projects and if the self-service platforms start adding features that compete with SSRS, I know I would start using those capabilities and phase out SSRS. But if that doesn’t happen, I will continue using SSRS 🙂

VIEW QUESTION ON QUORA

Let me know what you think in the comments section!

–Paras Doshi

This post is sponsored by MockInterview.co, If you are looking for data science jobs, check out 75+ data science interview questions!

SQL Server Reporting services: How to display “There are NO rows” message?

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Problem:

You have a SQL Server reporting services (SSRS) report that has a table which displays some records — but sometimes it can have NO rows; In that case, how to display “There are No rows” message so that it doesn’t confuse the consumer.

Solution:

  1. Open the report in SQL Server Data Tools and go to the “design” tab of your SSRS report
  2. Select your table (do NOT select a cell inside a table. Make sure that the table is selected) SQL Server reporting services NO data rows message
  3. While the “table” is selected, Go the Properties section OR you can use F4
  4. Inside the Properties section, find “No Rows” section and you should see a NoRowsMessage property:SQL Server reporting services NO data rows message v2
  5. Go to the preview tab to make sure it’s working and you should be ready to deploy the change!

That’s it! Hope that helps.

Official reference:  https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd220407.aspx

Author: Paras Doshi

How to change the Data Source of a SQL Server Reporting Services Report (Native Mode)?

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Problem:

You have your SQL Server Reporting Services environment in native mode — and you want to modify the data source of a report there.

Solution:

  1. Navigate to Report Manager.
  2. Navigate to the Report that you want to Manage and run it
  3. After the report renders, you will have a breadcrumb navigation on the top right
  4. Click on the Last Part of the Breadcrumb NavigationSSRS properties report native mode
  5. It should open up the “properties” section of this report
  6. On the properties section, you should be able to manage the data source
    SSRS Manage Data Source Native Mode Shared
  7. Make the changes that you wanted to the data source settings of this SSRS report — and don’t forget to click “apply”
  8. Done!

Author: Paras Doshi

Sales Bookings vs Quota Dashboard for a B2B company:

Sales Team bookings vs quota dashboard
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Business Goal:

Need a daily report delivered in sales team’s inbox that shows Sales Team’s Bookings vs Quota for current & next month.

Brief Description:

Ability to see Bookings vs Quota in near real-time is a key to effectively manage performance for any sales team. Before the project, analyst(s) would have to manually put together this report and since the report took more than a day to put together they couldn’t afford to run it daily and so they delivered this report bi-weekly/monthly basis to the sales team. After the project, the process was automated and the sales team received an email with a report on a daily basis and this helped them see Bookings vs Quota in near real-time. As a famous saying goes “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it” (by Peter Drucker) – in this case, the report helped them measure their actual numbers against their goals and helping them improve their sales numbers which directly hits their top-line!

Tools used: SharePoint report subscription, SQL server analysis services, SQL Server Integration services, SQL server reporting services & Excel.

Mockup:

Note: Drill down reports are not shown and the numbers are made up.

Sales Team bookings vs quota dashboard

Cost Driver’s Dashboard for a Supply Chain Executive:

Supply Chain Cost Drivers Profitability Dashboard
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Summary:

Profitability equals revenue minus costs – To that end, A supply chain executive is mostly focused on optimizing cost elements to drive profitability. Here’s a mock up of a dashboard created for an executive to help him keep an eye on the overall health while making sure he gets alerted for key cost categories.

The Dashboard was created using profitability data-set & also had drill down capabilities to analyze numbers for cost buckets like Raw materials, manufacturing & logistics.

Mockup:

Supply Chain Cost Drivers Profitability Dashboard

SQL Server Reporting Services Tip: How to capitalize just the first letter of text?

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Attention to detail is a key in creating SSRS reports/dashboards that look like a work of a professional; To that end, here’s a tip: How to capitalize the first letter in your string? In other words, how to Camel Case the Text?

Here’s the function that you can use in your SSRS Expressions:

[code language=”SQL”]

StrConv("hello world",3)

[/code]

OR

[code language=”SQL”]
StrConv("hello world",vbProperCase)
[/code]

InputFunctionOutput
hello worldStrConv(“hello world”,3)Hello World

I hope that helps!

Business Intelligence Dashboard for Plant Managers (operations focused):

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Business goal:

Plant managers needed a centralized automated solution that helped them monitor key metrics (operations focused) to help them better manage manufacturing plants.

Technical Summary:

– Work with the plant managers to identify key metrics & calculations to be displayed on dashboard

– Work with the IT managers to identify data source systems.

– Develop the Dashboard using SQL Server Reporting Services. (Built iteratively by making sure to have three checkpoint meetings with plant managers while working with IT/Business-Analysts to ensure data integrity)

– Developed drill down reports see detailed data at plant and machine level.

Mockup:

Plant Managers dashboard operations manufacturing

SQL Server Reporting Services: How to Solve Divide by Zero Errors?

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Problem:

you thought you wrote an if condition to handle “divide by zero” errors in SSRS but still get the run time error?

Example. my expression is:

[code language=”sql”]
=IIF(Fields!denominator.Value=0,0,
CINT(Fields!numerator.Value/Fields!denominator.Value))
[/code]

And I still get the error:
Divide by Zero Error SSRS

Note: if you do not have integers to divide and you allow data conversion to double, it would show on SSRS as “infinity” instead of “#Error”.

Solution:

Let’s understand why does it do it?

So even though you are using IIF condition, the vb IIF condition evaluates every function in every expression before it renders and that’s why the “False” condition that I have in my condition gets run which results in #Error.

Ok, armed with that knowledge, let’s solve the problem.

So here’s a modified version of the expression, have a look:

See what we did there! We added one more IIF condition in the “false” condition of the parent IIF.

[code language=”sql”]
=IIF(Fields!denominator.Value=0,0,
CINT(Fields!numerator.Value
/IIF(Fields!denominator.Value<>0,Fields!denominator.Value,1)))
[/code]

That should solve the problem:
Divide by zero fix customer code ssrs

There’s also an alternative to this especially if you have a lot of expressions that does this. You can write your custom code and call it SSRSDIVIDE or you can come up with a better name! Here’s a post that talks about how to do that: http://salvoz.com/blog/2011/11/25/ssrs-checking-for-divide-by-zero-using-custom-code/

Conclusion:
In this post, we saw how to solve the divide by zero errors in SSRS.

#sqlpass #msbi online event: “The Accidental Report Designer: Data Visualization Best Practices in #SSRS”

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PASS Business Analytics VC presents “The Accidental Report Designer: Data Visualization Best Practices in SSRS” by Meagan Longoria. Here are the meeting details:

Date & Time: Thu, June 19 2014 12:00 Eastern Daylight Time

RSVP URL:

http://bit.ly/PASSBAVC061914

Session Abstract:
Whether you are a DBA, a developer, or an analyst, there is a good chance that you will have to create reports for coworkers, company executives, or clients. As with any UI design, careful consideration should be given to your data visualization design to ensure you are effectively communicating the intended message and providing a good user experience. While the principles are applicable across reporting platforms and tools, this session will contain demos and examples implemented in Reporting Services using SQL Server Data Tools. Learn how to make information (not just data) the focus of your report and provide your audience with something better than just shiny!

Session Level:
Intermediate

Speaker BIO:
Meagan Longoria is a BI consultant with Valorem Consulting in Kansas City, Missouri. She has over 6 years of experience with the SQL Server BI stack and enjoys sharing her knowledge and experiences at SQL Saturdays. She is also one of the coordinators for SQL Saturday in Kansas City.
Contact URL: http://datasavvy.wordpress.com

See you there!

Paras Doshi
Chapter Co-Leader, PASS BA VC

SQL Server reporting services: How to use the Split function in the SSRS expressions to get sub-string?

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Problem Statement:
How do you use SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) expression to get sub-string from the inputted text?

Solution:
I am going to show you few SSRS expressions that you can use in your SSRS reports:

SSRS SQL Server Reporting Services Expression SPLIT

Here’s the same in a text:

Input:SSRS Expression used:Output:
[Date].[Fiscal Year].&[2008]Split(Parameters!DateFiscalYear.Value,”&”)(1)[2008]
[Date].[Fiscal Year].&[2008]Split(Parameters!DateFiscalYear.Value, “.”)(2)&[2008]
[Date].[Fiscal Year].&[2008]Split(Split(Split(Parameters!DateFiscalYear.Value, “&”)(1),”[“)(1),”]”)(0)2008
[Date].[Fiscal Year].&[2008]Parameters!DateFiscalYear.Value.Split(“&”)(1)[2008]

Conclusion:
In this post, you saw how to use the split function in SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) expressions to get a sub-string.