Knowledge is Key — SSRS with Dynamics AX

In this blog i have created a knowledge base for SSRS, which is really important now as Microsoft announces the future of AX Reporting is SSRS

What softwares do we need to start working on SSRS ?.

Visual Studio (for developing SSRS reports),
SQL SERVER with SSRS and SSAS (necessary for reporting, it should be configure properly as well),
Dynamics ax,
AX component for reporting, that will add the Visual studio template for Dynamics ax SSRS

How i can learn SSRS development with Dynamics AX?

Saveen Reddy, lead program manager for Dynamics AX Business Intelligence, acknowledges this difficulty in making the transition and has a series of posts on his blog, which might help developers and consultants alike “being productive”. Saveen also have recorded lots of Web cast related to SSRS, which is worth to watch for developers and consultants. Web casts can be access from his blog or from below link.

http://www.youtube.com/user/dynamicsaxbi

BI reporting

How we can debug the business logic in AX from SSRS report ?

There are certain steps that have to perform to debug the business Logic in AX. We have to use the ‘attach-to-the-server-process‘ approach using Visual studio. One approach to debug your business logic consist of the following steps

· Rebuild the report in VS in debug mode

· Save it back to the AOD
· Deploy the report
· Set a breakpoint at a strategic location in your business logic code
· Using Visual studio attach to the Dynamics ax server process
· Invoke your report
· Hit the breakpoint and start debugging

How can we call the SSRS report with AX menu item ?.

The basic steps

•Create an AX Query
•Create a new AX Reports Project and a new report in that project
•Create a dataset in the report bound to that query
•Create a design to report to render the dataset
•Preview the design
•Deploy the design to SSRS
•View the report via IE
•Save the Report project back into AX

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/saveenr/archive/2008/10/24/dynamics-ax-2009-creating-a-simple-ssrs-report.aspx

How to Enable Remote Errors for SQL Server Reporting Services

How to Enable Remote Errors for SQL Server Reporting Services  

Enabling remote errors for SQL Server Reporting Services means setting EnableRemoteErrors Reporting Services system property to True
There are two ways to set the EnableRemoteErrors property to true for a Reporting Services instance.  

Update Report Server database Configuration table for EnableRemoteErrors  

First way is updating the ConfigurationInfo table which is in the ReportServer database for configuration record named “EnableRemoteErrors”.
The default value for EnableRemoteErrors property in the ConfigurationInfo database table is “False”. You can simply run an update sql statement to enable remote errors.
But you may not be successful to see the changes made on the ConfigurationInfo table on the Reporting Services application, if the application is being used intensely.  

image009

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

  Enable EnableRemoteErrors property though running a script  

Second way to enable remote errors is using and running a script which updates the running configuration values of the Reporting Services.
The codes of the script that will update configuration values for EnableRemoteErrors is given in the SQL Server 2005 Books Online.
Here is the script codes :

Public Sub Main()
Dim P As New [Property]()
P.Name = “EnableRemoteErrors”
P.Value = True
Dim Properties(0) As [Property]
Properties(0) = P
Try
rs.SetSystemProperties(Properties)
Console.WriteLine(“Remote errors enabled.”)
Catch SE As SoapException
Console.WriteLine(SE.Detail.OuterXml)
End Try
End Sub  

Copy the above script code in an empty text file and as the script file as EnableRemoteErrors.rss on the root folder of your C drive. Of course you can select another name for the script file name and another folder to save your script. I chose C drive to keep it easy to run the below command prompt statement. Open the command prompt window by running the “cmd” command in the “Run” box. Then run the below command after you have replaced the ReportServerName with the actual name of the Reporting Services server you want to configure and the ReportServer instance name. You can keep ReportServer unchanged if you use the default configurations.

rs -i C:\EnableRemoteErrors.rss -s http://ReportServerName/ReportServer  

Enabling remote errors for a Reporting Services may help you to get more detailed information that may help for troubleshooting problems with Reporting Services applications and reports you are developing  

Errors on reports rendered by SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 and 2008 will not give you the full details of the issue if you are browsing on a machine other than that hosting SSRS. Instead, you just get this:  

  

With SSRS 2005 you had to manually edit a web.config or run code (SQL or other) in order to get more details beyond the SSRS box. Jim (Saunders) showed me something cool today in SSRS 2008 however:  

  

Setting EnableRemoteErrors here to TRUE will get you full report error details on remote clients. You access this screen via SQL Management Studio. Connect to SSRS, right-click on the server instance in Object Explorer and select “Properties”.