Standard Report Subscription in SSRS 2008 R2

You can set the subscription for the report in which case report server processes the subscription, generates the reports and delivers it to its intended audience via email delivery or file share delivery on the defined schedule, to learn more about it click here.

Understanding SSRS Report Definition Language (RDL)

SSRS reports are defined in Report Definition Language (RDL), which is nothing but Extensible Markup Language (XML) adhering to a defined report definition language schema. When we use Report Designer or Report Builder to create reports, it defines the report in Report Definition Language (RDL), which is an XML representation adhering to a defined report definition language schema (defines where an RDL element should exist), for more information click here.

Report Snapshots in SSRS 2008 R2

You can set SSRS to create report snapshots, which show data at a point of time or you can subscribe to your published reports.

An SSRS report snapshot represents a report that contains data retrieved at a specific point of time along with layout information in the form of intermediate rendering format. SSRS allows you to create report snapshots on defined schedule or on demand whenever you need to; a report snapshot is stored in the ReportServer database, for more information click here.

Report Caching in SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 R2

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server based scalable and extensible platform for authoring, deploying, executing and managing reports based on a variety of data sources. SSRS allows us to create interactive, tabular, graphical (using data visualization controls) or free form reports from relational, multidimensional (using MDX or DMX) or XML data sources. Furthermore it allows you to view/export your reports in a variety of formats. You can specify to create report snapshots, which show data at a point of time or you can even subscribe to your published reports.

To improve the performance of report processing, SSRS lets you enable caching for the report so that if the same report request comes again, the stored copy can be rendered in the desired format and served instead of processing it from scratch, for more information click here.

Creating and using Report Parts in Report Builder 3.0

Report Builder 3.0, which comes with SQL Server 2008 R2, is a new enhanced report development and report authoring tool intended to be used by business users for ad-hoc reporting. Report Builder 3.0 has numerous new features and one of them is Report Part Gallery, which allows you to create and publish report parts and reuse them in other reports. In other words, you can publish different report parts on the report server and reuse them in different reports when required, without recreating them from scratch, for more information click here.

Getting Started with SQL Server Report Builder 3.0

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) has a report development/authoring tool called Report Designer (Business Intelligence Development Studio) for creating managed reports. Though Report Designer has an intuitive interface for creating simple to complex reports, it can be a little complex for business users who want to create ad-hoc reports. SQL Server Reporting Services has a separate tool called Report Builder (separate downloadable) created especially for business users to do ad-hoc reporting.

Report Builder 1.0 first came with SQL Server 2005 and has grown up with each subsequent release. We are going to deep dive with Report Builder 3.0, which comes with SQL Server 2008 R2. For more information click here.

Getting Started with Utility Control Point in SQL Server 2008 R2

In my last article I talked about SQL Server Utility, Utility Control Point, what it is, how it helps SQL Server DBAs in multi-server administration, and finally I demonstrated creating Utility Control Point step-by-step.

To learn more about enrolling multiple SQL Server instances in an already created UCP for health data collection and monitoring purposes and how to administer SQL Server Utility and Utility Control Point, click here.

Understanding Utility Control Point (UCP) in SQL Server 2008 R2

As your business grows, the number of applications grows as well, as do the SQL Server instances to support these applications. As a SQL DBA, you need to have a multi-server management dashboard that proactively tells you about the resource utilization on each SQL Server instance.

SQL Server 2008 R2 introduced the SQL Server Utility and Utility Control Point, which lets you have a consolidated dashboard-type view of resource utilization on all the servers in your multi-server environments. It helps SQL DBAs to proactively monitor their SQL Server instances' resource utilization, for more information click here.

Managing and Monitoring SQL Server Service Broker Environments

Service Broker applications run in the background. You send a message and your command returns immediately. In the background, Service Broker keeps on trying to send the message to the destination service (Queue) until it puts the message there, times out or you end the conversation. These things all happen transparently to you and your sending application. So how would you troubleshoot your Service Broker applications if they're not working as expected, and how would you identify if something goes wrong? For for information click here.

Understanding Sequence Object in SQL Server Denali

Until SQL Server 2008 R2, the Identity column was used to generate sequential numbers to identify records in a table, mostly used as a primary/foreign key. The scope of the identity column is the table on which it has been created, and the next sequential number is created when the DML statement is executed. But what if you want to have sequential generation of numbers across tables (instead of tying the numbers with just one table), and you want to have the next sequence number even before execution of the DML statement? SQL Server Denali has a new feature called Sequence object for these purposes, while retaining Identity column functionality too, for information click here.