William (Bill) Vaughn's Musings

Updated Feb 4, 2010

I’m working on the labs for a new interactive webinar being hosted by Progressive. It’s tentatively scheduled for late April so I’m heads-down building the courseware. Unlike my “speak-only” webinars where I simply lecture and take questions, this series of six 90-minute sessions will encourage the attendees to work through a series of lab exercises that leverage the lectures and permit them to try to build and test SQL Server databases, SQL queries and reports using VB.NET and Report Builder 2.0.

In the course of creating these labs I’ve run across a number of issues that I would like to see Microsoft address in the next version of Report Builder. Frankly, I would not expect to see any work done on SQL Server 2010/2011 but I would like to see the following issue addressed after that:

SQL Server Magazine in conjunction with Windows IT Pro just published my article on Report Builder 2.0 security issues. Actually, the content is extracted from a much larger article on Report Builder that’s scheduled to be published in the print magazine later this year. The gist? Well, basically it discusses the implication of giving paradevelopers on your staff the ability to party down on your report catalog. These folks will be able to extract cataloged reports, modify them and save them back for everyone to see—whether or not they still represent an accurate depiction of your corporate data…

A third-party report generator (Pebble Reports) sent me this IBM presentation (see page 71) when I asked if their tool supported 2005, 2008 or 2010 RDL (they only support 2005).

“We depend on ReportViewer control for printing purposes and we are as miffed as you are that ReportViewer is always out of sync with ReportServer. Even MS competitors are taking advantage of this situation, for example see slide 71 of this IBM presentation where they talk about Microsoft's version incompatibilities.”

This further adds to the argument that Microsoft is not seen as capable of keeping their various development paradigms and the metadata they support in sync. I pounded on this issue two years ago when Visual Studio 2008 was getting ready to ship. However,  two years later Visual Studio BI and ReportViewer developers are facing the same lack of compatibility with the latest RDL (about to ship with SQL Server 2008 R2). Are developers expected to wait another two years before the ReportViewer control will work with RDL 2010 in local mode? By then I expect additional innovations to be out of reach as RDL evolves—leaving the ReportViewer control perpetually one version behind.

The CTPs of VS2010 I’ve seen so far do not support (generate) the most recent version of RDL as exposed in SQL Server 2008 (R2). Yes, VS2010 now generates what I call 2^nd generation (2008) RDL which is a step in the right direction, but it took two years to get this fixed. Because of this, Visual Studio 2008 was out of sync with the current RDL version for 90% of its lifetime.

I have just heard from Stella Chan (Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services) that VS2010 ReportViewer control is not designed to work with the current version of RDL in local mode. IMHO it never will be—not as long as the SQL Server team and the Visual Studio teams don’t keep their products in sync any better than they have in the past. I don’t expect the ReportViewer control to work with 3rd generation (2010) RDLc until 2012 (the next release of Visual Studio). By then there will doubtless be a new and improved version of RDL in the wings about to be released that it can’t use for another two years.

If you think this is just wrong vote for the bug I’ve logged in Connect (524610) (if you can find it)…

Sigh.

So Progressive wants me to write a course for “Beginners” that precedes my 9-hour webinar on SQL Server and Reporting Services. So, what do you think it should contain? What should I assume people know (or don’t know)?

I’ve been tuning my monthly webinar to include more information about SQL Server Reporting Services (R2) and Visual Studio 2010. It seems that Microsoft is about to do it again—ship Visual Studio with an outdated RDLc support. In this case VS2010 generates what I call 2nd generation (2008) RDL with the ReportViewer development tools. Of course, that’s a step forward because VS 2008 SP1 still uses 1st generation (2005) RDL. This means you’ll be able to generate reports using the SQL Server 2008 (R2) Visual Studio BI tools (which is VS2008) and easily import them into VS2008 or VS2010 ReportViewer projects.

Want a front-row seat in my next Webinar? If so, I’m accepting applications for the live studio audience. All you need to do is send me an note saying why you would like to attend. I can comfortably sit about four people so get your application in early. Let me worry about the conference $999 fee but if you bring doughnuts for everyone... I’ll pick the audience the Friday before the next talk (which is Tuesday January 19th at 09:00 Pacific time).

I’ve decided to serialize my novel “The Owl Wrangler” on a new blog. Over the next year, I’ll post a new chapter every week as long as I have Internet access. Check it out…