In yesterday's blog post Introducing sp_CascadingDataViewer I mentioned that one of the artifacts up at http://cascadingdataviewer.codeplex.com is a SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) report that visualises the output from sp_CascadingDataViewer and its compatriot sp_CascadingDataViewerTableWrapper.
My intended usage for the report was that it could be opened within SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) so that DBAs/devs could get quick access to the goodness that it provides but I was soon to discover that that is not (currently) possible. You may be surprised (nay shocked) to learn, as I was, that reports built using the SQL Server 2008 development tools cannot be used as custom reports in SSMS2008; this was confirmed by a MSDN support engineer at Cannot open Custom Reports in SSMS 2008 R2 who stated:
Only SSRS 2005 reports can be opened in SSMS 2008 R2. SSRS 2008 reports are not able to be opened in SSMS 2008 R2 too.
I hear a lot about backward-compatibility issues but I never though that current-version-compatibility would ever be a problem. How wrong could I be!
I'm pointing this out in case anyone downloads the sp_CascadingDataViewer 1.0 (beta) release and cannot open the report in SSMS as they may want to. Not my fault - I promise! Your only alternative right now seems to be to deploy to a SSRS Report Server somewhere and run it from there!
@Jamiet
P.S. If you as pissed off surprised as I am at this turn of events then feel free to have your say on Connect at: Reports built in BIDS2008R2 don't work as custom reports in SSMS2008R2
UPDATE: Dan Jones, head of the team that builds SSMS, has responded on Twitter with the following:
To build reports for SQL2K8-R2 SSMS use SQL2K8RTM BIDS. RS changed the RDL in R2 but didn't update the rpt cntrl.
and then later:
My bad! :-( You MUST use BIDS2K5 to author rpts for SSMS 2K5 & later.