I think I found a bug in SQL 2005 Reporting Services

Tim McCarthy — Sun, 27 Aug 2006 13:58:00 GMT

When using cascading parameters, if your data sources (for report parameter(s)) are connecting to databases, then they work perfectly fine. But if your data sources happen to be web services, then they just don’t work.

I opened up a case with Microsoft PSS about this, and was told in so many words “that’s just how the SQL Reporting Services engine works, it treats web service XML data sources as expressions and cannot send a parameter value from one report parameter to another.”

It seems like that it is just assumed that everbody who uses SQL Reporting Services will only use databases for their data sources. I happen to be working with a client who determines what database to connect to at runtine, and also has much of their report logic put into a business logic tier, and so we are using web services to expose the logic and data to the reports. It actually works quite well, except for this quirk about cascading parameters.

The case is still open, and if I do not get a resolution, I will definitely classify this as a bug.

Using web services with parameters as a data source in SQL 2005 Reporting Services

Tim McCarthy — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:25:00 GMT

First of all, I think it is awesome to be able call web services and other sources of XML data from reporting services. It is great when you want to reuse business logic in a report tht lives in another system or business logic layer, etc. and do not want to reinvent and duplicate the logic in a stored procedure.

But I ran into some difficulty getting this to work with web services that have partameters. Wow, the documentation on this really sucks. I finally got it to work, with the help of a good blog entry by Russell Christopher and a good post on the Channel 9 Forums by jcnovoa that refers to a good solution by Brian W from Microsoft. The keys were:

1. Separate out the Method and SoapAction elements:

http://Contoso.WebServices/" Name="GetAppointmentLogs" />
http://Contoso.WebServices/GetAppointmentLogs

2. Pass the parameters in from the parameters tab of the DataSet window in Visual Studio (by clicking on the Edit Selected DataSet ellipse).

Watch out for the format of the dates when passing to web services! The format is CCYY-MM-DD