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¿Have you ever thought of migrating to Reporting Services 2008… but you weren’t sure to expect?

  • Articolo

Before making the decision of migrating your Reporting Services 2000 or 2005 to 2008 (reports, models, data sources…) it is useful to consider the different scenarios that we might find, and understand the way Reporting Services upgrades the reports.

This article contains useful information that can help you to better plan the migration to Reporting Services 2008:

1. Scenarios and support statement.

2. Upgrading reports from RS 2005 to RS 2008 using the Report Manager.

3. Upgrading reports from the Report Designer.

4. Upgrade Advisor.

5. Useful links with the steps to perform the migration and upgrading to RS 2008.

1. Scenarios and support statement

Usage Scenario

             Support Statement

Applications made for RS 2005

• Will work

Applications made for RS 2000

• RS 2000 APIs SOAP not supported

• URL Access will work

RS databases in SQL 2005

• Will work

RS databases in SQL 2000

• Not supported

Sharepoint Integration

• There is a new Add-for 2008

v2 SharePoint WebParts

• Supported

One or more servers deployment

• Still supported

Scale-out deployment

• Still supported

RDL, RDLC

              Support Statement

RS 2005 RDL, RS 2000 RDL

•  Can publish directly to 2008 Server using Report Manager or SOAP API

• 2005 RDL will be preserved (not upgraded)

Report Designer 2000

• Not supported - cannot deploy reports to a 2008 server

Report Designer 2005

• Can deploy reports to a 2008 Server

Report Designer 2008

• Will upgrade 2000 and 2005 RDLs to 2008

• Authors 2008 RDLs

• Deploy to 2008 server only

VS 2005 Viewer

VS 2008 Viewer

• Authors SQL 2005 RDLs

• Does not support 2008 RDLs

 

2. Upgrading reports from RS 2005 to RS 2008 using the Report Manager

1. When running a report from the Report Manager, Reporting Services checks internally the versión which the report was created.

2. If the report was created with RS 2005, RS will try to convert it to 2008 format (creating an intermediate format). If there were errors during the upgrade process, the report will be flagged to be run by the RS 2005 engine instead, the execution of the report will be restarted.

3. If the report is flagged for execution in RS 2005 engine, it will not try to upgrade it ever again, and it will be executed with the RS 2005 engine (it will not benefit of the new memory improvement of the RS 2008 engine)

3. Upgrading reports from the Report Designer

If you open a report previously created with RS 2005 from the 2008 Report Designer, Reporting Services will try to upgrade the report to 2008. If there was any errors during the upgrade, a message will be shown to the user explaining that there has been errors and it will provide the possibility to continue the upgrade (losing the not allowed functionality) or not.

If you select the option to upgrade the report to 2008, it will create a copy (automatically) of the 2005 version of the report. This copy will be stored in the same folder and it will add the word ¨_ Backup¨ to the file.

If the reports created in 2005 included any Dundas chart, they will be converted without problems as long as the 2008 Dundas version is installed in the machine, and the reports don’t include any unsupported functionality like for example personalized code. The following link describes the unsupported functionality:

Description of the unsupported Dundas features in SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/956028

4. Upgrade Advisor

If what you want is to upgrade a machine with a former installation of Reporting Services, it is a good idea to run the Upgrade Advisor tool. This tool will analyze all the components of SQL installed from previous versions and it will generate a report with all the possible problems and solutions you might find. More information in the link bellow:

Using Upgrade Advisor to Prepare for Upgrades

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144256.aspx

5. Useful links with the steps to perform the migration and upgrading to RS 2008

How to: Upgrade to SQL Server 2008 (Setup)

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144267.aspx

 

How to: Migrate a Reporting Services Installation

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143724.aspx

 

Maria Esteban

Reporting Services Support Engineer

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