Ssrs Source File Could Not Be Read

SSRS has undergone a number of changes over the past few versions. Information technology remains a very popular reporting tool in companies big and modest. In this article, Eugene Meidinger recounts the history of SSRS and explains when it'southward the best tool to apply. This is the beginning article of a serial on SSRS.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based reporting tool, ideal for paginated reports. It represents a centralized approached to data governance, with all of your report files located on a key server. Notwithstanding, there are some self-service features available, such equally users existence able to make full in parameters, run reports on need, and even create their own reports.

By default, reports in SSRS are displayed using the HTML 5 rendering engine, which Microsoft added dorsum in 2016. Despite the rendering existence web-based, yous can export reports to a number of file formats, including PDF, CSV, Give-and-take, and Excel. These files tin can exist scheduled to go out in a regular email or to be saved to a file share.

Time to come manufactures volition cover topics like how to build and format your reports, visual controls, advanced features, security, and deployment. Before talking about how to use SSRS, I'll spend some time reviewing the Microsoft reporting mural, which has changed dramatically over the past four years. Deciding which tool to use has become a more complex proposition.

Microsoft Reporting Landscape

Currently, there are four primary tools for rendering reports within the Microsoft ecosystem:

SSRS
SSRS Mobile Reports (formerly Datazen)
Power BI
Excel

Each of these tools has an ideal use example, but at that place is significant overlap in capabilities
amidst all of them. Your choice in a reporting tool is going to depend on your existing
skillset, the type of users you lot are supporting, and how those users wish to consume the reports.

As a unproblematic example, more and more users are consuming reports exterior of the office or on their mobile devices. That trend is going to impact which solution yous cull. Here is a review of the options available.

SSRS

SSRS was originally released in 2004 equally an improver for SQL Server 2000. Since then it has gone through many changes and enhancements. Fundamentally, however, it is the aforementioned product at its cadre. SSRS is a sail-based reporting tool where you add reporting objects (tables, charts, text, images) to a blank canvas until you lot accept your terminal report.

SSRS reports are traditionally accessed via a central web portal. Permissions tin be specified on a site-wide level, folder level or even on individual reports. This allows for a granular set up of permissions, which tin exist important if yous are dealing with financial data or audited reports.

SSRS Mobile Reports

Fifty-fifty though SSRS Mobile Reports are ostensibly part of SSRS, I think of them every bit a dissimilar product. Partly because they serve a completely different use case and considering they initially were a different product! SSRS Mobile Reports were originally a product called Datazen. In 2015, Microsoft acquired the product from ComponentArt and rolled the software into SSRS.

The master apply case of SSRS Mobile Reports is self-explanatory. Optimizing SSRS reports, which are rigid and document-oriented, for mobile devices tin be quite the challenge. Instead, SSRS Mobile Reports takes a grid-based arroyo with charts that are fluid and piece of work at a variety of sizes.

Power BI

If SSRS is at present entering its teenage years, Power BI is practically a toddler. Power BI was initially a loosely related set of Excel add-ins: Ability Pivot, Ability Query, Ability View, and Power Map. Still, in 2014 the tool was combined and rebranded as a deject-based production. While the underlying data engines are the same, Power BI today is an entirely different product from the Excel 2010 add together-ins.

It can be a struggle at times to explicate what use example Ability BI was designed to solve. That's because it was not so much designed and as information technology was chop-chop iterated. Power BI represents a new Microsoft, releasing changes every unmarried month and responding directly to customer feedback. Gone are the days of releasing a new version of a product every 2 years.

If I were forced to explain what Power BI is nigh, I would say this: Power BI is a full reporting pipeline, aimed at business users and BI developers alike. It is a cloud-starting time SaaS (software as a service) product designed to cheaply back up concern intelligence throughout the organization. It excels at analytic, interactive reporting.

Excel

Excel is an incredibly pop spreadsheet tool included in the Microsoft Office suite. If your business users work with data, there is a good run a risk that they use Excel. Excel is perfect for manipulating and organizing numbers in a spreadsheet and has a powerful formula language behind information technology. Information technology also has robust charting and graphing capabilities.

If SSRS represents a centralized approach to reporting, Excel represents the opposite. Excel is file-based, and those files have a tendency to proliferate. Sometimes, these files are pejoratively referred to as "spreadmarts," when company data is stuck in flat files instead of a relational database. That being said, it is quite possible to centralize your Excel reports using SharePoint or OneDrive.

What are the Benefits of SSRS?

I'm going to inquire yous a impaired question: could you utilize a fork to spread butter on toast? In my mind, the answer is "Maybe? Sort of?"

Information technology'southward important to brand certain that you choice the right tool for the correct job. SSRS has a specific set of things it is very good at and a specific set of things it isn't. Offset, have a wait at the areas where SSRS shines.

Pixel Perfect Control

More than whatsoever other Microsoft reporting tool, SSRS gives y'all a significant amount of fine-grained command over your report outputs. You have control over exactly where each study component is located. You tin too control formatting details such equally font, size, color and background color.

If you need something to print just right, SSRS is an platonic solution. This lends information technology to
operational documents such as invoices, workorders, and annihilation else that might get mailed out to a customer.

Extracting Data

SSRS makes it very piece of cake for you to get data out to your cease users. If you have a line-of-business awarding with limited congenital-in reporting, y'all tin get a study running against it in minutes. In one case you lot've created the report, users can excerpt the information to whatever format they need (Give-and-take, Excel, PDF, etc.). I should note that in big-scale operations, running reports directly against an OLTP system is non appropriate for performance reasons.

Data Governance

SSRS makes it easy to control who has access to your reports and data. Information technology is possible to specify permissions on the whole server, specific folders of reports or on a single written report. Permissions inherit downwards, like a regular file organization, unless you explicitly break inheritance to specify custom permissions.

In addition to permissions, y'all accept a fundamental server to house and control your reports. This is critical when you need an administrative source of truth for your reporting. Users tin can trust that they are reading the latest version of any given report.

In addition to the administrative side of things, SSRS provides a powerful development environs with SSDT. SQL Server Information Tools (SSDT) is based on Visual Studio, a very popular Integrated Programmer Environment or IDE. SSDT makes information technology incredibly easy to shop your reports in source control since your reporting artefacts are just XML files. Source control makes it possible to collaborate on a team or rollback to earlier versions of a report. This is a capability that is non available with Excel or Power BI reports.

What are the Downsides of Using SSRS?

At my prior employer, we used SSRS exclusively for a long time. Information technology is a mature tool capable of roofing a large number of needs. That existence said, information technology's non a ane-size-fits-all tool. Now take a look at some areas where SSRS is a flake weaker.

Interactivity and Data Exploration

SSRS is much better at press or exporting than information technology is at direct interactivity. At that place are some means to get around this by using parameters, drill-through reports or activeness links; however, your options are still quite limited. Compare this to Power BI, where, by default, if you click on a visual, all of the other visuals automatically cantankerous-highlight or cross-filter.

Because of the limited interactivity, SSRS is not ideal for data exploration. Y'all have limited options for slicing and dicing the data. SSRS makes more sense when you know what you want the end result to look like. If you to play around with the data, yous are much better off with Excel or Ability BI.

Learning Curve

While SSRS isn't difficult to learn, it tin be a bit unintuitive. Getting started is very easy, with a wizard guiding you through each step. After that, it's not difficult to elevate and drib new objects and change properties to existing objects. Going beyond the nuts tin can exist a struggle, nevertheless.

What I found near challenging when learning SSRS was dealing with container objects and grouping. For case, it took me quite a while to empathize how to add summary rows versus detail rows. As another example, where something is placed on the written report dramatically affects which dataset it is pulling from or if y'all are displaying detail information or summary data.

Initial Pricing

Whether SSRS's pricing is a strength or a weakness depends a lot on context. Compared to tools like Qlikview or Tableau, SSRS tin be quite cheap. Instead of paying per user, you are paying per core just like SQL Server. SQL Server 2017 costs $1,859 per core for Standard or $vii,128 per cadre for Enterprise edition.

If you have a lot of low-frequency users or tin reuse an existing SQL Server, then this can be the way to go. That beingness said, most organizations volition host SSRS on its own server for performance reasons. This ways you lot can easily be paying $7,500 simply for SSRS licensing.

If you are looking to kickoff pocket-size and grow out organically, Power BI might exist a meliorate fit. Power BI is licensed by user at $10 per user, per month. Even Excel is pretty affordable with an Role 365 E3 license costing $25 per user per month, which is often already paid for by organizations.

When Should You Use SSRS?

Given these pros and cons, when does it brand sense to use SSRS? As I said earlier, you can't merely look at what the tool can do. You too must consider if it is a practiced fit for your organization.

Printed Documents

If you need to print something out, SSRS is a no-brainer. While I've seen people utilize Excel for creating invoices, I wouldn't advise it. For anything that requires branding, strong formatting command, or press control, SSRS comes out on meridian.

SSRS has back up for more than advanced press features every bit well, such as footers, headers, watermarks, and page numbers. You can hands configure the margins and layout of your report to get information technology exactly the way y'all want.

Detail Heavy Reporting

SSRS is excellent for displaying lots of textual and numerical information. You can format information to be quite readable. SSRS is an ideal fit for any operational reporting. Call up anything that needs printed on a daily basis: workorders, invoices, buy orders, etc.

Excel, by contrast, is great for displaying lots of numbers simply the formatting and layout slice can become messy quickly. Finally, Ability BI merely wasn't designed for this kind of work. While it does have table and matrix controls, information technology is optimized for displaying charts and for interactive reporting.

Strong SQL Skills

If your organization has strong T-SQL and SQL Server skills, SSRS is a good fit. This is because SSRS is licensed the same as SQL Server and is administered as a SQL Server component. Additionally, at that place is an active SQL community and plenty of resources to acquire more virtually it.

Simple Mobile Reports

Up until 2016, SSRS was a poor choice for mobile reports. While it was e'er possible to expose the spider web portal to the outside internet, trying to read SSRS reports on a small mobile browser was a pain.

With the conquering of Datazen, that changed. Now it is easy to quickly accept a shared dataset and create something that looks expert on a phone or tablet. Additionally, the SSRS Mobile tooling provides dummy data and so you can start with your report design and work your style backwards.

Summary

This article briefly reviewed the reporting tools available in the Microsoft space. It covered the strengths and weaknesses of SSRS and wrapped up with platonic use cases for it.

Ultimately, SSRS is groovy if you need to get data out of your system or need to accept fine-grained control over your reporting documents. If you are looking to create interactive reporting, or to outset cheap, Excel or Power BI are a better fit.

In the next commodity, I will show you lot how to get upwardly and running with SSRS as quickly equally possible.

goinsappredery.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.red-gate.com/simple-talk/databases/sql-server/bi-sql-server/ssrs-reporting-basics-when-is-ssrs-the-right-tool/