Customising toolbar in the browser of RS HTML viewer

Dear friends,

please help me by commenting on my query.

Query::

I want to know how to customise the tool bar in RS HTML viewer, we can hide or show the toolbar using rc:toolbar= false/true, But i want to customise the tool bar.

ie, There is a combo for export formats to export the displaying reports. I want to customise that combo. I can clear the items by removing the extension element in the config of RS, but i want to do it in run time .

ie, My different reports should show different export formats simulteniously

You can customize the individual items on the toolbar with the information below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/bimusings/archive/2005/07/08/436887.aspx

However, there is no way to dynamically customize the rendering extensions that can be used at runtime (or on a per-report basis). You essentially enable or disable each rendering extension in the config files, and based on this work, certain formats show or don't show in the combo-box.

If you *must* have this functionality, I'd suggest that you turn off the toolbar completely and create your own version of the HTML toolbar which handles paging, zooming, etc. via URL Access (There is a sample of this in SSRS 2000). If you go this route, YOU can choose what rendering extensions to show the user in your own combo-box...However this will take a fair amount of work.

|||

As u said i checked the path

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\ReportServer\styles

the Styles folder doesn't exist. my version is RS 2000 enterprise Edition.

i searched for .css files in my installation folder i only got one major css ie ,reportingservices.css in

Reportmanager\styles

|||

It's very helpful and good article.

but can we make the changes in main "htmlviewer.css" and we got the reflected changes in all the reportserver reports.so by doing this we don't have to make another copy of css file and give "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename".

i have also second question is there any way by which we can pass "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" URL to parent report to child report(by drilling down-jump to report) method.

thanks in advance.

|||

i didnt see any provision for adding url parameters in child reports. but we shall try one thing .

In your parent u add a parametr in some name "stylesheet" , and pass the value . this we can do . and while making the chil report u can assign parametrs or that , so create a parameter in the name "rc:Stylesheet" and select the value . the value is the parent parame value

ie , "rc:Stylesheet = stylesheet "

hope u will inform me regarding this

|||

Hai it's good idea, thanks ..

i did one try and it's working.

i had add "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" in my parent report, now when i am drilling down to child report

"rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" parameter will automatcally carried forward to next report(child report).so there is no problem

for passing "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" one report to another report.

but i try your solution in different case, because i have also problem while passing "rs:clearsession=true" to other report.

Thanks,
Sanket.

|||

Hi .

I had made the changes in respective CSS file for hiding print icon in report toolbar and deployed report in local reporting

service machine (LAN) and our onsite machine.

but the problem i am facing is when i am accessing my local reporting server machine at that time print icon is not

visible.so it's as per my requirement. but when i am accessing our onsite machine reporting server at that time i seen print

icon and it's only seen in my PC, my other team members doesn't seen that print icon both on local reporting service machine

and onsite reporting service machine.

can anyone help me out in this issue, because it's very urgent ..

Thanks,
Sanket.

Customising toolbar in the browser of RS HTML viewer

Dear friends,

please help me by commenting on my query.

Query::

I want to know how to customise the tool bar in RS HTML viewer, we can hide or show the toolbar using rc:toolbar= false/true, But i want to customise the tool bar.

ie, There is a combo for export formats to export the displaying reports. I want to customise that combo. I can clear the items by removing the extension element in the config of RS, but i want to do it in run time .

ie, My different reports should show different export formats simulteniously

You can customize the individual items on the toolbar with the information below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/bimusings/archive/2005/07/08/436887.aspx

However, there is no way to dynamically customize the rendering extensions that can be used at runtime (or on a per-report basis). You essentially enable or disable each rendering extension in the config files, and based on this work, certain formats show or don't show in the combo-box.

If you *must* have this functionality, I'd suggest that you turn off the toolbar completely and create your own version of the HTML toolbar which handles paging, zooming, etc. via URL Access (There is a sample of this in SSRS 2000). If you go this route, YOU can choose what rendering extensions to show the user in your own combo-box...However this will take a fair amount of work.

|||

As u said i checked the path

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\ReportServer\styles

the Styles folder doesn't exist. my version is RS 2000 enterprise Edition.

i searched for .css files in my installation folder i only got one major css ie ,reportingservices.css in

Reportmanager\styles

|||

It's very helpful and good article.

but can we make the changes in main "htmlviewer.css" and we got the reflected changes in all the reportserver reports.so by doing this we don't have to make another copy of css file and give "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename".

i have also second question is there any way by which we can pass "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" URL to parent report to child report(by drilling down-jump to report) method.

thanks in advance.

|||

i didnt see any provision for adding url parameters in child reports. but we shall try one thing .

In your parent u add a parametr in some name "stylesheet" , and pass the value . this we can do . and while making the chil report u can assign parametrs or that , so create a parameter in the name "rc:Stylesheet" and select the value . the value is the parent parame value

ie , "rc:Stylesheet = stylesheet "

hope u will inform me regarding this

|||

Hai it's good idea, thanks ..

i did one try and it's working.

i had add "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" in my parent report, now when i am drilling down to child report

"rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" parameter will automatcally carried forward to next report(child report).so there is no problem

for passing "rc:Stylesheet=cssfilename" one report to another report.

but i try your solution in different case, because i have also problem while passing "rs:clearsession=true" to other report.

Thanks,
Sanket.

|||

Hi .

I had made the changes in respective CSS file for hiding print icon in report toolbar and deployed report in local reporting

service machine (LAN) and our onsite machine.

but the problem i am facing is when i am accessing my local reporting server machine at that time print icon is not

visible.so it's as per my requirement. but when i am accessing our onsite machine reporting server at that time i seen print

icon and it's only seen in my PC, my other team members doesn't seen that print icon both on local reporting service machine

and onsite reporting service machine.

can anyone help me out in this issue, because it's very urgent ..

Thanks,
Sanket.

Custom Security: How do you manage groups

Dear Anyone,

We are trying to create our own custom security extension for rs2005. We are wondering how will then security extension will manage the authenticated users and how will it be mapped to an existing RS2005 group or role?

Thanks,

Joseph

It completely depends on how you write the extension itself.

I'd recommend that you use the forms auth extension as a start: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Samples\Reporting Services\Extension Samples\FormsAuthentication Sample

Change the parts of it that handle authentication, and then leave the parts alone which do authorization for you.

If you go this route, you will continue to use all the same roles you did before: Browser, Content Manager, etc.

|||

How would this dovetail with using Custom roles within the custom authentication database?

I've already implemented a version of the custom authentication extension and have the basic SSRS Forms auth working.

For example, users of my application log in with a companycode and would be put into one or many custom application roles that would ostensibly control the visibility of various folders and reports (you can imagine the various scenarios). Would I have to intercept the ASP.NET authentication pipeline and insert a custom Principal/Identity into the HTTP context? Would SSRS use the "User.IsInRole" construct to determine if the user is in a role that can "see" the restricted SSRS objects?

Just in case I confused anyone...I want to be able to add application-domain roles to the SSRS built-in (and possibly custom) roles and use those to restrict visibility to the SSRS objects.

Thanks,

Matthew Belk

|||Did you ever find an answer to this question? We're wanting to do the same thing (use roles from our custom application DB).|||

You can do this by assigning security within RS using the role names (just like windows groups). To get this to work though you will need to:

1. make your implementation of IAuthenticationExtension.IsValidPrincipalName check against the roles in your custom database
2. Implement IAuthorisationExtension.CheckAccess and in there look up the roles the user belongs to and check the access based on the username and his roles.

A good sample of this is located at:

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/26759 - Part 1
http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/27133 - Part 2

Incidentally, I would like to take this further by using the Membership and Role Management Application Services of ASP.NET 2.0 to manage my users and roles.

So far I've been able to get the Forms Authentication working and I've set up the Membership and Role Management features, but when I try to use the 2 together i.e. make my logon.aspx page call Membership.ValidateUser the report server stops working and returns:

An internal error occurred on the report server. See the error log for more details. (rsInternalError) Get Online Help

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

Custom Security: How do you manage groups

Dear Anyone,

We are trying to create our own custom security extension for rs2005. We are wondering how will then security extension will manage the authenticated users and how will it be mapped to an existing RS2005 group or role?

Thanks,

Joseph

It completely depends on how you write the extension itself.

I'd recommend that you use the forms auth extension as a start: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Samples\Reporting Services\Extension Samples\FormsAuthentication Sample

Change the parts of it that handle authentication, and then leave the parts alone which do authorization for you.

If you go this route, you will continue to use all the same roles you did before: Browser, Content Manager, etc.

|||

How would this dovetail with using Custom roles within the custom authentication database?

I've already implemented a version of the custom authentication extension and have the basic SSRS Forms auth working.

For example, users of my application log in with a companycode and would be put into one or many custom application roles that would ostensibly control the visibility of various folders and reports (you can imagine the various scenarios). Would I have to intercept the ASP.NET authentication pipeline and insert a custom Principal/Identity into the HTTP context? Would SSRS use the "User.IsInRole" construct to determine if the user is in a role that can "see" the restricted SSRS objects?

Just in case I confused anyone...I want to be able to add application-domain roles to the SSRS built-in (and possibly custom) roles and use those to restrict visibility to the SSRS objects.

Thanks,

Matthew Belk

|||Did you ever find an answer to this question? We're wanting to do the same thing (use roles from our custom application DB).|||

You can do this by assigning security within RS using the role names (just like windows groups). To get this to work though you will need to:

1. make your implementation of IAuthenticationExtension.IsValidPrincipalName check against the roles in your custom database
2. Implement IAuthorisationExtension.CheckAccess and in there look up the roles the user belongs to and check the access based on the username and his roles.

A good sample of this is located at:

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/26759 - Part 1
http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/27133 - Part 2

Incidentally, I would like to take this further by using the Membership and Role Management Application Services of ASP.NET 2.0 to manage my users and roles.

So far I've been able to get the Forms Authentication working and I've set up the Membership and Role Management features, but when I try to use the 2 together i.e. make my logon.aspx page call Membership.ValidateUser the report server stops working and returns:

An internal error occurred on the report server. See the error log for more details. (rsInternalError) Get Online Help

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.sql

Custom Security: How do you manage groups

Dear Anyone,

We are trying to create our own custom security extension for rs2005. We are wondering how will then security extension will manage the authenticated users and how will it be mapped to an existing RS2005 group or role?

Thanks,

Joseph

It completely depends on how you write the extension itself.

I'd recommend that you use the forms auth extension as a start: C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Samples\Reporting Services\Extension Samples\FormsAuthentication Sample

Change the parts of it that handle authentication, and then leave the parts alone which do authorization for you.

If you go this route, you will continue to use all the same roles you did before: Browser, Content Manager, etc.

|||

How would this dovetail with using Custom roles within the custom authentication database?

I've already implemented a version of the custom authentication extension and have the basic SSRS Forms auth working.

For example, users of my application log in with a companycode and would be put into one or many custom application roles that would ostensibly control the visibility of various folders and reports (you can imagine the various scenarios). Would I have to intercept the ASP.NET authentication pipeline and insert a custom Principal/Identity into the HTTP context? Would SSRS use the "User.IsInRole" construct to determine if the user is in a role that can "see" the restricted SSRS objects?

Just in case I confused anyone...I want to be able to add application-domain roles to the SSRS built-in (and possibly custom) roles and use those to restrict visibility to the SSRS objects.

Thanks,

Matthew Belk

|||Did you ever find an answer to this question? We're wanting to do the same thing (use roles from our custom application DB).|||

You can do this by assigning security within RS using the role names (just like windows groups). To get this to work though you will need to:

1. make your implementation of IAuthenticationExtension.IsValidPrincipalName check against the roles in your custom database
2. Implement IAuthorisationExtension.CheckAccess and in there look up the roles the user belongs to and check the access based on the username and his roles.

A good sample of this is located at:

http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/26759 - Part 1
http://www.devx.com/dotnet/Article/27133 - Part 2

Incidentally, I would like to take this further by using the Membership and Role Management Application Services of ASP.NET 2.0 to manage my users and roles.

So far I've been able to get the Forms Authentication working and I've set up the Membership and Role Management features, but when I try to use the 2 together i.e. make my logon.aspx page call Membership.ValidateUser the report server stops working and returns:

An internal error occurred on the report server. See the error log for more details. (rsInternalError) Get Online Help

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

custom report item test justification.

Dear all,
i need to extend the functionality of the textbox in reporting services to
implement text justification align.
i made a research and found the concept of "custom report items" but it's
implmented as image i also see the sample of polygonCL in SDK extention
samples
i am asking if there are a way to take all the functionality of textbox and
on just extend the required functionality' or develop a new textbox and
render it as image?
thanksWhat do you mean by text justification?
If you mean you want to center, right align, or left align - those are
already availiable. Just click on the text box and clikc one of the
Justifications.
I dont think this is the problem you are facing. What, exactly, is the
issue? and what is it your tryingto accomplish?|||thanks a lot for your replaying
i mean by text justification is the text width is the same for all line
inside textbox
if you look at word u will see right, left, center and justify align
i need to use a justify align for textbox
by the way i am using RS 2005
thanks
"sorcerdon@.gmail.com" wrote:
> What do you mean by text justification?
> If you mean you want to center, right align, or left align - those are
> already availiable. Just click on the text box and clikc one of the
> Justifications.
> I dont think this is the problem you are facing. What, exactly, is the
> issue? and what is it your tryingto accomplish?
>

Custom Parameter Page with Report Manager

Dear Everyone,

Suffice it to say, almost everyone who seriously uses (relies) reporting services hates the postbacks that the report parameter section does. It literally runs all queries that populates the report parameters. This will just not do.

We're thinking of creating a custom web page to either augment or replace the parameter section of the report. Our problem is that we dont know how to connect it to report manager in such a away that it will actually interact with the current instance of the report. Has anyone tried this at all? Does anyone have any idea on how to accomplish this?

Thanks,

Joseph

The postbacks should only occur when a parameter has parameters that depend on it. If you are seeing post backs in other cases, this could be a bug. Keep in mind that expression based parameters are assumed to have dependencies on all parameters that are defined before them. I'm not sure how you would write your own parameters that would not require a post back (unless you know all combinations of parameter values and never expect the back-end data to change).

Report Manager is not extensiblie so there is no way replace this section of Report Manager.

|||

Thanks for the reply. We understand that postbacks only occur on parameters with dependencies. But the thing that really is a head ache is when a post back occurs, all queries of all the parameters gets fired again in the server. Our reports have an average of 8 parameters. This means that when a post back occurs, all queries related to the 8 parameters (data set used in population) gets executed again making another round trip to the server. We're still hoping that this is a bug because for us, this is a major concern over the reporting services product and absolutely does not add any business value to the product.

|||

Yes, we do re-execute all queries. The reason is we need to verify that the values is still valid.

We do realize that this is a pain point and I have opened a bug to track this issue. That is not a guarantee that it will change, but we will certainly look into alternative solutions. Thanks for bringing this issue to us.

Have you looked into using Report Execution Snapshots? For these we will store all the parameter queries so they will not be re-executed. Of course you data will not be live either so that may not be an option for you.

|||

Thank you for a reply. It's a relief that at least someone is taking a look into it.

You mentioned the use of report execution snapshots. Are parameters with dependencies (cascading parameters) also cached when their used on report execution snapshots?

|||Yes, cascading parameters are all stored in the snapshot. You should not see any paramter queries run if the report is running from a snapshot execution. The problem is your limited to only change the parameters that are not in a query so I don't think it will solve your issue.