Managing Report Properties
After you switch the report server to integrated mode,
you can no longer use Report Manager or SQL Server
Management Studio (SSMS) to manage report properties.
Reports in integrated mode have the same properties
you use to manage reports in native mode. A report has
a context menu, which Figure 3 shows, to let users with
either Contribute or Full Control permission access all
report properties. Users with only Read permission have
a more limited set of options on this menu.
If you use shared schedules for report snapshot
generation or subscription delivery, you need to set up
and manage these schedules across the site. Just click
Site Actions, point to Site Settings, click Modify All
Site Settings, and click Manage Shared Schedules in the
Reporting Services section. Here, you can also pause
or resume existing shared schedules. You use a report’s
Subscription Properties or Manage Processing Options
page to manage custom schedules, but keep in mind that,
unlike with shared schedules, there’s no central location
for managing all custom schedules.
One of the first new capabilities you should consider
implementing in integrated mode is report metadata. With
native SSRS, you can store as metadata only the name and
description fields. But in integrated mode, you can add
more report metadata fields to help users find and use the
reports they need. Simply open the Settings menu in the
document library, and click Create Column. In the Create
Column page, you can define a name, data type, and field
length and specify whether the column is required. You
can even provide a default value. Note that even if you
specify a column as required, reports can be deployed and
approved without satisfying this requirement. However,
the next time you use the Edit Properties command on a
report, you must provide a value for the required column
to save any other property changes you make.
MOSS also includes auditing and expiration features.
To learn more about implementing these features, see
the Web-exclusive sidebar “Enabling Information-
Management Policies,” InstantDoc ID 97156.
Managing Versions
MOSS integrated mode brings new version-management
capabilities to SSRS. Versioning is managed at the library
level, so open the applicable document library, and select
Document Library Settings from the Settings menu. In the
General Settings section, click Versioning Settings. In the
Document Library Versioning Settings page, which Figure
4 shows, you can configure several options to control the
status and visibility of new content, including whether a
newly uploaded report must be approved before it’s visible
to all users with access to the library. This feature is great
for testing the appearance and behavior of a report on the
server before making it available to everyone.
The process for approving a report is slightly different
than approving a data source because the approval
mechanism isn’t available from the report’s context menu.
Instead, an authorized approver must open the context
menu, click View Properties, and then change the status to
Pending. Only then does the report’s context menu include
the Approve/Reject command.
You can also specify whether report edits generate a
new version and, if so, whether versions should be tracked
as major versions or as major and minor versions. To prevent
versioning history from spiraling out of control, you
can limit the number of versions that can accumulate.
You can also require that a report be checked out
before it can be edited. If you enable this requirement,
edits become changes to the report’s properties that you
perform by selecting Edit Properties on the report’s context
menu. Using Check In and Check Out prevents two
people from simultaneously making changes to the same item. Be aware that you can redeploy a report from BIDS
without first checking it out, but each deployment of the
report updates the versioning history.
You can’t render a previous version of a report in
MOSS, but you do have access to the report definition
language (RDL) for that version if you open the version’s
context menu and click View. Just copy and paste the
RDL into a report’s code page in BIDS, and then preview
the report in that environment, as long as the data source
and queries in the report are still valid. From the version
history list, you can use the Restore command on the context
menu to replace the current version with a previous
version. However, you first need to check out the report
before you can revert to a previous version.
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