SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) Interview Questions 

My background is in accounting and I am a CPA.

On Monday, the IT Department told my boss that they would prefer that I become the system administrator for our ERP system called Vision. Its a program used company-wide to process everything from Timesheets to Accounts Payable to Marketing Opportunities.

I have no training in IT. I do know how to run TSQL queries and have created some useful stored procedures for the database. I have also created some reports using SQL Reporting Services.

What type of training/certification do you recommend?

I have an application written in asp (not .net) which currently creates Crystal reports in PDF format (both displays in a pdf webpage and writes the pdf file to a network share). The report is driven by a stored procedure which has parameter values passed to it and then created from the .asp page using pdf creator functions after a user selects a record on the .asp page. Can this kind of functionality be created using reports created in SQL 2005 Reporting services? I can create the actual SQL report the same as the Crystal report, but can I do all the other things behind the scenes with SQL that I'm currently doing behind the scenes with Crystal in the .asp pages using these pdf creator functions? Thanks!

How much would an experienced programmer (5-6 years) proficient in .Net, C#, XML Web-services, MS-SQL, reporting services, OOAD, etc would make in and around Waterloo, Iowa, Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

I have a web application built as a way to search through invoices, summaries, and work orders. In short, when a user drills down to a specific invoice, summary or work order, they may hit a print button, which launches a sql reporting services report.

Please avoid commenting on the obvious architectural flaws, as I could just use a stylesheet w/ media set to print to format the drilled-down invoice, summary or work order, because my boss insisted I use sql reporting services.

Nevertheless, I built the damn thing. Works great.

However, for deployment, we're throwing the app on one web server box, and the database on another.

My boss has just one sql server license, and, as you may know, sql reporting services is a part of the server install. So, sql reporting services must reside on the database server.

The problem is that sql reporting services makes a web app for itself only on the local IIS. Because I simply will not point traffic to the database server, I need help.

I was looking at this site.

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/communi...

and this sentences exactly.


Host: Bruce (Microsoft)
A: There is a sample report posted on the public newsgroup that shows how to sort columns.

Host: Bruce (Microsoft)
Q: How do I find the sample report that shows how to sort columns?
A: In the microsoft.public.sqlserver.reportingsvcs newsgroup search for the Sorting thread posted on 1/27/2004.

but here in news group, I can only find upto 3rd month of 2004. Can any one help by letting me know how to access this article or give an example of enabling the option of user clicking on column header/button to sort the records by column. This I only want in sql server reporting services 2000. Not in 2005. Thanks in advance.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/newsgroups/def...

I want to generate reports from the SQL Server 2000 databade combining different tables. I dont want to use Crystal reports or any other reporting services. I want to use reporting services of SQL server 2000

It is possible... Reporting Services comes with a wizard tool to do the converting, but it's not very good. I tried converting Cystal 8.5 and 9.0 reports - only the ones that didn't have many formulas worked OK.

I have a report parameter for the end-dates of time periods from a time keeping system that I am using the query to obtain the available values. The issue lies in the fact that there are multiple entries for the same date in the database (for example, there might be 30 entries for 8/6/2006), as there is a date entry for each time period end-date for each employee who entered their hours into the system then. Is there any way to limit the list to only one entry per date (only see 8/6/2006 ONCE, not 30 times), with having only one parameter and not two for a range of dates?

How to set up Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with Reporting Services correctly on a Windows Server 2003?
I encountered alot of problems setting up the SQL Server 2005 togehter with the reporting service. I am not using Active Directory so is there a better way to set up the database server correctly?

1) Just like you do it in any query.
select tbl1.col1, db2..tbl2.col2
from tbl1 join db2..tbl2
on tbl1.id = db2..tbl2.id

2) Or you can use OPENROWSET or one of its sister functions.

3) Or you can do it in code elsewhere and hook that code up to a web service and set your dataset up to pull from that web service.

4) Or you might be able to do it using custom assemblies.

5) Or you can get really tricky with report parameters and multiple datasets.

The downsides:
1) You have to know the name of the other database (and possibly the table owner). And the database has to be on the same server. And you won't get a good error message if there is a problem.

2) You have to store the entire connection string in your query.

3) You have the overhead of the transport layer and the added architectural complexity or the web service.

4) Haven't researched this, but it could get complex.

5) It's one big hack, complexity will grow exponentially.

It could all be solved if MS just added the ability to modify the SQL at run-time.

It seems that the best method is to re-architect a few things on the backend or in the report's design and avoid the issue of having to join the two databases in the first place.

I am wanting to use a parameter in a report that specifies not just a single date, but a range of dates. How might I go about doing this?

I am trying to work with multiple datasets in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Is there a way to join two tables when each one is in a different dataset?

MS SQL Reporting Services

I am trying to use only a select set of values in my report from a particular table in the database I am using, as opposed to the entire list of values from the table. How would I use either parameters or filters to do that in MS SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services?

not sure what version of sql you are using but its tough to tell yo uin this forum. try using books online, search under reporting services. also try msdn if you get stuck:http://forums.microsoft.com/msdn/default...