SSRS in Visual Studio 2022 (and 2019)

14 December 2023 Dave-Stuart SSRS, Visual Studio 2022

Thanks to Daniel Calbimonte who posted this article here: SSRS in Visual Studio – SQLServerCentral

Where are the SSRS Projects in Visual Studio?

Where is SSRS in Visual Studio 2022? Traditionally, you need to install the SSDT and check SSRS to have it installed. However, things have changed in SSRS over the years. This article explains how to install SSRS in VS 2022.

2017 and 2019 Extensions: Microsoft RDLC Report Designer and Microsoft Reporting Services Projects

 SSRS History

A long, long time ago, the SQL Server installer included an option to install the BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio) including Reporting Services. In SQL Server 2012, the BIDS were named SSDT. The SSDT used the version of Visual Studio. It was a VS extension to handle projects like SQL Server Projects, SSIS, SSAS, and SSRS projects.

In SQL 2014 you had to install SSDT from the website and it was no longer in the SQL Server installer. There were SSDT versions for VS 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2017. And then in VS 2019 the SSDT did not include an installer for SSRS. So that is why we have this article. To help you to install the extension for Visual Studio 2022.

The SSRS extension for VS 2022 is available here: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ProBITools.MicrosoftReportProjectsforVisualStudio2022&ssr=false#review-details

Getting started with SSRS in Visual Studio

First, I am assuming that you already have Visual Studio 2022. Secondly, in Windows Search, look for the Visual Studio Installer and open it.

Thirdly, look for the Data Storage and processing workload and check SQL Server Data Tools.

Once installed you will notice that you don’t have Reporting Service, Analysis Service, and Integration Services projects.

Why is it getting more difficult to install?

The humble opinion of this writer is that Microsoft wants us to move to Azure technologies like Synapse, Power BI, Azure Data Factory. However, in general, we can say that Microsoft tries to handle VS extension as separated projects in a generic way. I mean, all the extensions should be installed in a standard way.

Installing SSRS Projects in Visual Studio

In order to create your SSRS projects, you will need to go to extensions in the VS menu. Secondly, go to Extensions>Manage Extensions

Thirdly, in the search textbox, search for Reporting. You will see Microsoft Reporting Services Projects. Check the reporting services to install it.

Testing the installation

Firstly, in Visual Studio, go to File>New>Project

Secondly, if you are using it for the first time and you have several types of projects installed, search for reports and you will see 2 options.

  • The Report Server Project Wizard is the easiest way for newbies to create a report from scratch without too much knowledge in SSRS.
  • Report Server Project is used if you have some experience creating reports to create your own report. You could invoke the Wizard here if you need to.

Finally, specify a Report name and a location.

Conclusion

SQL Server Reporting Services is in SQL Server, but the Projects in Visual Studio are extensions. In order to install the extension, you need to install the SSDT first with the Visual Studio Installer, and then in the Visual Studio go to Extensions to install the SSRS extension.

The Analysis Services projects and Integration Services projects have a similar approach. You need to install them separately.

Cannot open SSRS/SSIS projects with VS2017

29 August 2019 Dave-Stuart SSRS, Visual Studio 2017

When you’re trying to open your SSIS or SSRS solution, you will get a message that the migration has failed or ‘The application which this project type is based on was not found.‘

From https://www.jonashendrickx.com/2017/06/26/cannot-open-ssrsssis-projects-vs2017/ 

Method 1

  1. Open ‘Microsoft Visual Studio 2017‘.
  2. In the menu bar, expand ‘Tools‘, then choose ‘Extensions & Updates‘. to install an extension.
  3. Search for ‘Microsoft Reporting Services Projects‘, and install this extension.
  4. To complete the installation, shut down all windows and instances of Microsoft Visual Studio 2017. Then the installer will start.
  5. Try to open your solution or projects (*.rptproj) again.

Method 2

  1. Close all windows and instances of ‘Microsoft Visual Studio 2017‘.
  2. Download ‘Microsoft Reporting Services Projects‘ from the Visual Studio marketplace.
  3. Open your solution or project.

SQL Reporting Services Error- Maximum request length exceeded

17 January 2017 Dave-Stuart SSRS

From here: http://www.isolutionspartners.com/sql-reporting-services-error-maximum-request-length-exceeded/

You could, quite honestly, run into this error in a lot of situations involving a web app, but we’re talking specifically about SSRS in this post. The basic problem here, is that your posting an amount of data to a web app larger than it is configured to accept.  Hence, it is throwing an error.

It’s an easy fix though.  You’ve got to adjust the web.config for the web app, which in the case of reporting server, is usually somewhere like this:

For SQL Server 2012: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS11.MSSQLSERVER2012\Reporting Services\ReportServer

Find the web.config file for your reporting services instance, open it up, and track down the line that looks something like this

executionTimeout = "9000" />

Now just add a max request length attribute in there to fix the problem, adjust your size as needed.  This is 5meg.

executionTimeout = "9000" maxRequestLength="500000" />

And now you’ll need to restart IIS.  start->run->”iisreset”

SSRS Display Row and Column Headers on Multiple Pages (Report Builder and SSRS)

04 January 2017 Dave-Stuart SSRS

From: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd207045.aspx

  1. On the design surface, click the row or column handle of the tablix data region to select it. The Grouping pane displays the row and column groups.

  2. On the right side of the Grouping pane, click the down arrow, and then click Advanced Mode. The Row Groups pane displays the hierarchical static and dynamic members for the row groups hierarchy and the Column groups pane shows a similar display for the column groups hierarchy.

  3. Click the static member that corresponds to the static member (row or column) that you want to remain visible while scrolling. The Properties pane displays the Tablix Member properties.

    If you don’t see the Properties pane, click the View tab at the top of the Report Builder window and then click Properties.

  4. In the Properties pane, set RepeatOnNewPage to True.

  5. Set KeepWithGroup to After.

  6. Repeat this for as many adjacent members as you want to repeat.

  7. Preview the report.

Cannot download .rdl files in SSRS Report Manager 2012

14 June 2016 Dave-Stuart SSRS

In this scenario, it can be many reasons to cause this problem, even the current user has enough authority to do anything on Report Manager. Please try to do trouble shooting as below:

  1. Run the browser as an Administrator.
  2. Add the Report Manager URL as Compatibility View settings.
  3. Use http://<servername>/reports instead of using Localhost.
  4. If the steps above still can't make you see the dropdown menu, it might caused by corrupt reportingservices.js file. Please try to restore this file on server.

SSRS – Toggle Visibility Show Initially as Expanded + –

26 April 2015 Dave-Stuart SSRS

https://popbi.wordpress.com/2012/08/21/ssrs-toggle-visibility-show-initially-as-expanded/

‎Reporting Services provides some nice options to allow user’s to feel like they are interacting with the data, by expanding lower levels of detail when they click on the plus (+) sign in the report’s tablix. You can also set the initial Toggle state of report items as expanded i.e. (-) sign.  There is a catch though in that when you Show your initial state as expanded, the items may expand correctly but the toggle sign appears reversed (i.e. +  instead of -).

Nice solution to the problem demonstrated Here.