5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

andyleonard — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:32:15 GMT

Hi James,

I think your only mistake is in limiting these concepts to SSRS development. These are clearly principles of software design that can (and should) be applied to all projects.

:{> Andy

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

Geoff — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 16:57:59 GMT

I'm trying to think of another way of saying 2). Having something tangible to critique is really important when developing GUIs. There is always something unverbalized or something which will not be recognized until the actual product is before you.

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

James Luetkehoelter — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 17:26:47 GMT

Andy: I totally, totally agree. Report design should follow basic UI principles (limit information to one screen, don't overload with info, etc.). I only wanted to complain about report design for now - I'll pick on UI design at another time (and don't get me started there :) ).

Geoff: That's a great way to put it - your first round through a UI design (which is what a report is) should be to give the customer an idea of what they could have, or present them with what they asked for so they can realize that they were mistaken in what they needed (or misworded it). Unverbalized - that's the problem, isn't it - there are some things you just can't verbalize unless you have a hint of some kind...great response, thanks!

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

Hans Mustermann — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 08:44:10 GMT

Pagination in RS is awful.

You can't even use expressions to control it.

Also, when exporting to certain formats, the whole thing gets screwed up anyway.

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

James Luetkehoelter — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 15:52:35 GMT

Hi Hans,

I agree that paginition is a pain. I'm going to be a little more kind and call it "challenging". There are things that can be done control it (mostly using Lists and Rectangles), but even then there can be odd pages. Exporting controlled or uncontrolled pagination can also lead to "interesting" results.

So, in the mindset of my original post, I would as this as something developers need to take in mind from step one - how will it paginate? And how will it paginate when exported to say, PDF?

Great point, pagination is another one of those basic UI design principles that you see missed time and time again. Thanks!

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

SSRS Guy — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 04:58:50 GMT

RE: "(without subreports - no one should ever have to use a supreport again)"

Take the situation where your report needs to call a Stored Procedure to populate its report table, before reading the data from said table.

How would you go about doing this without using a sub-report as the data reader? There appears to be noway to control the order SP's are called within a single (non-subreport) report.

I have been told the only way to do this in SSRS (Report Builder) is with subreports.

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

Prasanna KJ — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 07:53:36 GMT

Hi can Anyone help me Regarding the alternate point labels in chart

please do reply

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

snktheone — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:04:43 GMT

Hi James ,

Nice blog ...

appreciate your suggestions on the best practices...

All those who are still lost with the basics on SSRS

check out my blog @

http://ssrsbasics.blogspot.com/

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

Chan — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 22:44:57 GMT

Hi James,

Thanks for tips. I am write about a SSRS blog as well. If anyone is intested go to http://ssrsdeveloper.blogspot.com/

Thanks.

re: 5 things I wish every SSRS developer would do

Boris_Us — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 15:40:40 GMT

Hi James,

This is not only reporting tool, you can analyse your data results