A few weeks ago, we updated one of our internal servers with the latest software that I work on. Everything went smoothly and no complaints were heard for a few days. Unfortunately, I had assumed everything was fine.
I came into work one day and was confronted about a report not working. I was shocked because I was not aware of any reports. I later found out that one of the guys who used to work here created a customized report for someone that communicated with this servers database. I didn’t know where the report was hosted and went through a few places before I found it.
Because this was a major upgrade, the entire schema of the database had been revised. I found the original stored procedure for this report on the old database that was still running. I worked late on Friday to fix the problems so that it would work with the new schema. I ran the report and … It wouldn’t work.
I went digging around with the properties of the report on the website and saw something called an “RDL” file. (Report Definition Language maybe?). I downloaded it and saw that it pretty much consisted of XML. I changed a few database settings, but it still didn’t work. I also found a few queries embedded within the XML file as well and updated those to fit with the new schema.
After uploading it again, I checked it out and it actually worked! I found out that this is something to do with SQL Server Reporting Services. This is kind of a pain to edit these files manually. I’m wondering if there is a GUI to work with them easier. Hopefully our QA department will be happy when they come in tomorrow with my shiny new email greeting them.