Only my second stack question, I'm pretty new to ssrs, but I'd rather do it the right way and learn now, then have to come back and fix everything later.
I'm going to create a semi-flexible reporting (SSRS) standard for my company and getting global consensus ahead of time is impossible. My proposed solution will be to create a formatting table that I can update to alter the look and feel of all my reports of one type. (tables, charts etc.) I have thought of two ways to do this and I am looking for advice on which is better and if how I am thinking it will work...will actually work. I am totally willing to research all the specifics of how-to, but I'd really appreciate a hint on how to start.
Is there a way to reference which attribute (e.g. name, background color) your expression is in? It would be awesome if I could use the same code for all the attribute's expressions and just have that code find it's spot in the table.
something like:
attribute.value = lookup(ReportFormataDataset as RFD, attribute.name =
RFD.name and left(me.name, 3) = RFD.prefix)
Alternatively I could run a loop in VBA code to change the attributes based on what's in the table. I plan to create a report template with naming conventions to help. (e.g. hdr, ttl, bdy prefix) so it could look like:
for each reportItem in report
for each el in FormatTable
'make sure the report item is what I think it is, like header
if left(ReportItem.name, 3) = el.prefix then
'e.g. backgroundcolor = Blue
name.value = el.value
end if
end loop
end loop
but then when would I run it, I would imagine this slowing my report a lot if I did this in the expressions. Maybe with variables instead?
I found this:
tips-tricks-ensure-consistency-sql-server-reporting-services-reports
but it seems very cumbersome to maintain if I add a formatting requirement later I'll have to add that parameter to all the reports and the attribute.
I know this seems a little fishing-y but I am not sure how either of these would work and I know I could throw days of effort at either when an expert could point me in the right direction in 5 minutes so... sorry if this is not in the 'stack spirit' and thank you.
We have implemented something similar, and have used the method of setting up a shared dataset that all the reports call. This returns a single record, that includes all the images, background colours and date formats we might use across the reports (including company logo and branding colours).
If we had a date in a cell for example, we would then set the number format to
=First(Fields!FullDateFormat.Value, "ReportConstants")
Where ReportConstants is the named of the shared dataset.
This also allows us to have the same report deployed both in the UK and the US, yet both use their native date format, as this is set by the database instance, instead of within the report.
Now whether this is the right approach to take or not is another question, but it works for us, using the ~50 reports in multiple locations, without having to configure each one individually all the time.
Is this helpful?
Related
I have a table named buildings
each building has zero - n images
I have two solutions
the first one (the classic solution) using two tables:
buildings(id, name, address)
building_images(id, building_id, image_url)
and the second solution using olny one table
buildings(id, name, address, image_urls_csv)
Given I won't need to search by image URL obviously,
I think the second solution (using image_urls_csv column) is easier to use, and no need to create another table just to keep the images, also I will avoid the hassle of multiple queries or joining.
the question is, if I don't really want to filter, search or group by the filed value, can I just make it CSV?
On the one hand, by simply having a column of image_urls_list avoids joins or multiple queries, yes. A single round-trip to the db is always a plus.
On the other hand, you then have a string of urls that you need to parse. What happens when a URL has a comma in it? Oh, I know, you quote it. But now you need a parser that is beyond a simple naive split on commas. And then, three months from now, someone will ask you which buildings share a given image, and you'll go through contortions to handle quotes, not-quotes, and entries that are at the beginning or end of the string (and thus don't have commas on either side). You'll start writing some SQL to handle all this and then say to heck with it all and push it up to your higher-level language to parse each entry and tell if a given image is in there, and find that this is slow, although you'll realise that you can at least look for %<url>% to limit it, ... and now you've spent more time trying to hack around your performance improvement of putting everything into a single entry than you saved by avoiding joins.
A year later, someone will give you a building with so many URLs that it overflows the text limit you put in for that field, breaking the whole thing. Or add some extra fields to each for extra metadata ("last updated", "expires", ...).
So, yes, you absolutely can put in a list of URLs here. And if this is postgres or any other db that has arrays as a first-class field type, that may be okay. But do yourself a favour, and keep them separate. It's a moderate amount of up-front pain, and the long-term gain is probably going to make you very happy you did.
Not
"Given I won't need to search by image URL obviously" is an assumption that you cannot make about a database. Even if you never do end up searching by url, you might add other attributes of building images, such as titles, alt tags, width, height, etc, so you would end up having to serialize all this data in that one column, and then you would not be able to index any of it. Plus, if you serialize it with one language, then you or whoever comes after you using a different language will either have to install some 3rd party library to deserialize your stuff or write their own deserialization function.
The only case that I can think of where you should keep serialized data in a database is when you inherit old software that you don't have time to fix yet.
I am very new to VBA and SQL and am trying to learn. I have a MS Access project that requires a VBA script that prompts the user to input two table names and numerous field names and create a SQL query utilizing those the names.
The specific SQL query I'm trying to use is below.
SELECT
A.user_index, A.input1, B.input1, A.input2, B.input2, A.input3, B.input3, B.input4,
A.input4, A.input5, B.input5
FROM
table1 AS A
LEFT JOIN
table2 AS B ON A.user_index = B.user_index
WHERE
(((A.input1) <> [B].[input1)) OR
(((A.input2) <> [B].[input2])) or
(((A.input4) <> [B].[input4]));
The overall purpose of this is to have a script that will be able to list fields for comparison that is applicable with any database. I know this is probably a relatively easy solution. However, I have no idea where to start.
My first instinct is to say "What have you tried so far?", but as you said, you don't know where to start.
It sounds like you need to first prompt the user for several field and table names, then build a query based on those values. I recommend first outlining exactly what you want your script to do. Maybe something like:
Declare variables to hold the values.
Prompt the user for each of the values and store them in the variables.
2a. After the user enters a value, make sure it is valid. If not, do something accordingly.
Declare a variable to hold your SQL query.
Construct the query.
Run the query.
This is obviously just an example. Break down each step into "baby steps" as much as possible.
It's a good idea to ask yourself how unique these baby steps are to your particular situation (hint: they almost certainly are not unique). If they aren't, then they have probably been solved tens of thousands of times already, so you have a very good chance of googling your questions.
If you still can't find an answer to how to do a particular step, feel free to ask here. Just remember to include your code even if it is broken :)
I am changing the command text for a data set inside the .rdl ffile:
I would like to know how can I update the resulting fields that are returned by the select statement:
I know that these fields must be automatically generated, so I was wondering if it's possible to update them right after editing the SQL code inline??
Usually when someone wants to have a look at the data in command text they are wanting it for reference to an end user(from what I have seen). You may want to amend it but ultimately with reporting your first goal should be: "What am I doing this for?" If your goal is dynamic creation at runtime then I would avoid this and offer a few other suggestions:
Procertize it. Making a stored procedure if you have the know how in SQL Server is a convenient and fast way to get what you want and you can optimize it if you know what you are doing with your SQL FU to get good results. The downside would be if you work with multiple environments you have to deploy your code for the TSQL as well as the RDL file.
Use an expression to build the dataset at runtime. In cases where I have been told that the query itself was not properly optimized by other developers they have mentioned doing this. I myself do not always see the advantage of doing this versus just having your predicate construction work well with good indexing on the source engine. Regardless you can build your dataset at runtime. It would be similar to hitting 'fx' next to the text and then putting in something like this(assuming you have a variable named #Start):
="Select thing
from table
Where >= " & Parameters!Start.Value
Again I have not really seen if this is really that much faster than:
Select thing
from table
Where >= #Start
But it is there if you just want to build it dynamically.
You can try to build your expression dynamically from parameters being PART of the select statement. SSRS is all about the 'expressions' and what you can do with them. Once you jump in and learn how they apply to everything you can go nuts so to speak on using them. A general rule though is the more of them you use and rely on the slower your reports will become.
I hope some of this may help, I would ask first is something dynamic due to a need to be event driven or is performance related.
Say that I needed to share a database with a partner. Obviously I have customer information in that database. Short of going through and identifying every column that contains privacy information and a custom script to 'scrub' the data, is there any tool or script which can scrub the data, but keep the format in tact (for example, if a string is 5 characters, it would stay 5 characters, only scrubbed)?
If not, how would you accomplish something like this, preferably in TSQL?
You may consider only share VIEW, create VIEWs to hide data that you don't want share.
Example:
CREATE VIEW v_customer
AS
SELECT
NAME,
LEFT(CreditCard,5) + '****' As CreditCard -- OR, don't show this column at all
....
FROM customer
Firstly I need to state professional interest I work for IBM which has tools that do exactly this.
Step 1. Ensure you identify all the PII (Personally Identifiable Information). When sharing database information it is typical that the obvious column names like "name" are found but you also need to find the "hidden" data where either the data is embedded in a standard format eg string-name-string and column name is something like "reference code" or is in free format text fields . as you have seen this is not going to be an easy job unless you automate it. The Tool for this is InfoSphere Discovery
Step 2. What context does the "scrubbed" data need to be in. Changing named fields to random characters has problems when testing as users focus on text errors rather than functional failures, therefore change names to real but ficticious. Credit card information often needs to be "valid". by that I mean it needs to have a valid prefix say 49XX but the rest an invalid sequence. Finally you need to ensure that every instance of the change is propogated through the database to maintain consistency. Tool for this is Optim Test Data Management with Data Privacy option.
The two tools integrate to give a full data privacy solution.
Based on the original question, it seems you need the fields to be the same length, but not in a "valid" format? How about:
UPDATE customers
SET email = REPLICATE('z', LEN(email))
-- additional fields as needed
Copy/paste and rename tables/fields as appropriate. I think you're going to have a hard time finding a tool that's less work, unless your schema is very complicated, or my formatting assumptions are incorrect.
I don't have an MSSQL database in front of me right now, but you can also find all of the string-like columns by something like:
SELECT *
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE DATA_TYPE IN ('...', '...')
I don't remember the exact values you need to compare for, but if you run the query and see what's there, they should be pretty self-explanatory.
I am trying to figure out the best way to model a spreadsheet (from the database point of view), taking into account :
The spreadsheet can contain a variable number of rows.
The spreadsheet can contain a variable number of columns.
Each column can contain one single value, but its type is unknown (integer, date, string).
It has to be easy (and performant) to generate a CSV file containing the data.
I am thinking about something like :
class Cell(models.Model):
column = models.ForeignKey(Column)
row_number = models.IntegerField()
value = models.CharField(max_length=100)
class Column(models.Model):
spreadsheet = models.ForeignKey(Spreadsheet)
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
type = models.CharField(max_length=100)
class Spreadsheet(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
creation_date = models.DateField()
Can you think about a better way to model a spreadsheet ? My approach allows to store the data as a String. I am worried about it being too slow to generate the CSV file.
from a relational viewpoint:
Spreadsheet <-->> Cell : RowId, ColumnId, ValueType, Contents
there is no requirement for row and column to be entities, but you can if you like
Databases aren't designed for this. But you can try a couple of different ways.
The naiive way to do it is to do a version of One Table To Rule Them All. That is, create a giant generic table, all types being (n)varchars, that has enough columns to cover any forseeable spreadsheet. Then, you'll need a second table to store metadata about the first, such as what Column1's spreadsheet column name is, what type it stores (so you can cast in and out), etc. Then you'll need triggers to run against inserts that check the data coming in and the metadata to make sure the data isn't corrupt, etc etc etc. As you can see, this way is a complete and utter cluster. I'd run screaming from it.
The second option is to store your data as XML. Most modern databases have XML data types and some support for xpath within queries. You can also use XSDs to provide some kind of data validation, and xslts to transform that data into CSVs. I'm currently doing something similar with configuration files, and its working out okay so far. No word on performance issues yet, but I'm trusting Knuth on that one.
The first option is probably much easier to search and faster to retrieve data from, but the second is probably more stable and definitely easier to program against.
It's times like this I wish Celko had a SO account.
You may want to study EAV (Entity-attribute-value) data models, as they are trying to solve a similar problem.
Entity-Attribute-Value - Wikipedia
The best solution greatly depends of the way the database will be used. Try to find a couple of top use cases you expect and then decide the design. For example if there is no use case to get the value of a certain cell from database (the data is always loaded at row level, or even in group of rows) then is no need to have a 'cell' stored as such.
That is a good question that calls for many answers, depending how you approach it, I'd love to share an opinion with you.
This topic is one the various we searched about at Zenkit, we even wrote an article about, we'd love your opinion on it: https://zenkit.com/en/blog/spreadsheets-vs-databases/