Sql – How to share an image between projects in Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 2005

reporting-servicessql-server-2005

I have a SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services solution containing several reporting projects. (I need separate reporting projects so that I can deploy reports to the correct folders on the report server.)

We want to include our company's logo in the header of each report.

I don't want to bake the logo image into each report ("embedded"); nor do I want to include a copy of the logo in each reporting project.

Still, I would like for the logo to "live" in the solution and on the report server one way or another so it's packaged up with the reports and gets deployed along with the reports.

How?

Best Answer

The best solution I have come up with so far goes like this:

Create a reporting project (called “Shared” in my case).
Include the logo image in that project (it goes into the “Reports” folder, but that seems irrelevant).
Configure that project to deploy where and when I want. (For the “where”, a folder called “Shared” was the default and suited me.)
On each report, set the properties for the image in the “layout” tab thus (and I mean the properties in the sidebar view, not the other properties in the pop-up dialog box):
- Under “Data”, set Source to “External”
- Under “Data”, set Value to “../Shared/logo.png”

(To apply this to many reports, it helps to do bulk manipulations on the RDLs’ underlying XML.)

This shows a broken image link when I play with the report in Visual Studio, but when I deploy it to a report server, the logo appears.

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How to get Visual Studio 2008 to edit SSRS 2005 Report Projects w/o Installing SQL Business Intelligence Development Studio 2005

You cannot. Check this forum posting which has a reponse from Microsoft.

Yes, it was an active decision that the 2008 design evironments would not support continuous backwards compatability but would rather be a one way upgrade. This was not a casual decision and it is understood how it can be an impact.

You can read the entire posting for more details on why you are unable to use VS2008 for SSRS 2005 projects. Very annoying, but I guess I can understand why they had to make that decision. Just about the only reason I have VS2005 on my dev machine now is for Reporting Services projects since our company is not going to be upgrading to SQL Server 2008 anytime soon.

Sql – Simulating group_concat MySQL function in Microsoft SQL Server 2005

No REAL easy way to do this. Lots of ideas out there, though.

Best one I've found:

SELECT table_name, LEFT(column_names , LEN(column_names )-1) AS column_names
FROM information_schema.columns AS extern
CROSS APPLY
(
    SELECT column_name + ','
    FROM information_schema.columns AS intern
    WHERE extern.table_name = intern.table_name
    FOR XML PATH('')
) pre_trimmed (column_names)
GROUP BY table_name, column_names;

Or a version that works correctly if the data might contain characters such as <

WITH extern
     AS (SELECT DISTINCT table_name
         FROM   INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS)
SELECT table_name,
       LEFT(y.column_names, LEN(y.column_names) - 1) AS column_names
FROM   extern
       CROSS APPLY (SELECT column_name + ','
                    FROM   INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS AS intern
                    WHERE  extern.table_name = intern.table_name
                    FOR XML PATH(''), TYPE) x (column_names)
       CROSS APPLY (SELECT x.column_names.value('.', 'NVARCHAR(MAX)')) y(column_names)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

How to get Visual Studio 2008 to edit SSRS 2005 Report Projects w/o Installing SQL Business Intelligence Development Studio 2005

Sql – Simulating group_concat MySQL function in Microsoft SQL Server 2005

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