Scale to Cloud Reporting with Azure and Syncfusions RDL Report Viewer

In 30 minutes or less

by Daniel Jebaraj

Contents
Goals .................................................................................................................................................................................... 3 Background ....................................................................................................................................................................... 3 SQL Azure ...................................................................................................................................................................... 3 SQL Azure Reporting (preview as of February 2012) .................................................................................... 3 Syncfusions Reporting SolutionA little history ............................................................................................... 4 Before We Get StartedSystem requirements ................................................................................................... 5 Create a New SQL Azure Reporting Server ........................................................................................................... 5 Create a new SQL Azure server.................................................................................................................................. 8 Import data from the Northwind database ................................................................................................... 10 Optional stepexport your own data to SQL Azure ................................................................................. 10 Import data into SQL Azure ................................................................................................................................. 13 Configure a shared data source inside the reporting server .................................................................. 14 Use Microsoft Report Builder to build the report ....................................................................................... 16 Viewing SQL Azure report from your WPF or Silverlight application .................................................. 19 Summary ......................................................................................................................................................................... 20

Syncfusion | Contents

Goals
This white paper will walk through the creation of a complete SQL Azure report from scratch. It will then deploy the report and visualize it in a WPF application. The steps are quite detailed for completeness. Please feel free to skip sections that are not applicable to your needs. No prior knowledge of Windows Azure is assumed.

Background
Cloud computing brings with it the promise of scalable and easy-to-manage services. Windows Azure is Microsofts entry in this arena. It is a very credible entry that packs powerful features such as a relational data store. As with all Microsoft products, the management and development infrastructure is also very good with an excellent set of tools being available to support development and deployment. For our current purpose, two of these services are of interestSQL Azure and SQL Azure Reporting.

SQL Azure
SQL Azure is a full-fledged relational database engine in the cloud that can be administered with standard Microsoft tools such as SQL Server Management Studio. The only thing missing from SQL Azure other than a few rarely used features (http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/windowsazure/ee336245.aspx) is the headache associated with managing production servers. With SQL Azure, you have access to database features such as triggers, views, stored procedures, and indexes. SQL Azure Database provides two database editions: Web Edition and Business Edition. Web Edition databases can grow up to a size of 5 GB and Business Edition databases can grow up to a size of 150 GB. You can host up to 149 databases on each SQL Azure server.

SQL Azure Reporting (preview as of February 2012)

Microsoft announced a groundbreaking product during Q4 of 2011a preview version of an enterprise reporting product named SQL Azure Reporting. SQL Azure Reporting is modeled on SQL Server Reporting Services.

Syncfusion | Goals

While SQL Server Reporting Services has been available for years within SQL Server, it took effort and management overhead to install and maintain. For that reason, while very popular in environments that had the IT staff and infrastructure required, it was not very commonly used in smaller and mid-sized environments. Smaller and mid-size markets are currently dominated by rather poorly designed, inflexible proprietary solutions. SQL Azure Reporting is set to change this in a big way. The ease with which SQL Azure Reporting can be deployed is quite amazing. You can create a report server and go live with your reports in less than 30 minutes. In addition, SQL Azure Reporting provides the benefits associated with the cloudscalability, high availability and vastly reduced management overhead. You can also rest assured that your reports are stored in an open format backed by multiple vendors instead of a proprietary format that may or may not be supported in the long run and on future platforms. Additional information on SQL Azure Reporting is available here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/enus/library/windowsazure/gg430132.aspx.

Syncfusions Reporting SolutionA little history

Several years ago when Syncfusion was looking into building a reporting product, we considered several options including building our own proprietary reporting solution. Building a proprietary solution would have given us a lot of flexibility in using technology we saw fit. It would have dramatically cut down the time to market since we would not have had to work on implementing every aspect of a detailed specification. While most third-party reporting vendors chose to go in this direction, we decided that this was not the right thing to do for our customers. We firmly believed that data and reports need to be available in documented and open formats since data outlives most applications. 10 or 20 years down the line, it will still be important to have access to data in its original format complete with reports that were prepared for studying it at that time. Using a proprietary solution would have meant giving up on this core premise. Instead, we resolved to build a set of reporting products that would work strictly based on open formats. We took years to bring some of these products to market since the formats were complex and involved a lot of hard work. Little did we know then that this journey would take a decade. Today, we are proud that we ship the largest reporting suite on the .NET platform. Our Excel, Word, and PDF libraries are used by

Syncfusion | Syncfusions Reporting SolutionA little history

thousands of customers to generate complex documents to exacting standards on a very large scale. In addition to the file format based reporting products, we have also been working on a Report Definition Language (RDL)-based reporting engine that will offer a true WYSIWYG editing and production experience for reports. Our RDL-based reporting product has been updated several times over the past 3 years, and with Syncfusion Essential Studio 2012 Volume 1 we were excited to announce a version that we consider ready for most enterprise reporting needs. This product is unique in the .NET reporting market since it is the only reporting system that is built end-to-end on open standards. As a direct consequence of being built on RDL, it is also the first and only third-party reporting solution to support SQL Azure Reporting (SQL Azure Reporting also uses RDL as its native format).

Before We Get StartedSystem requirements

Access to Windows Azure services. If you are an MSDN subscriber, you can activate Windows Azure services from within your MSDN account. Alternatively you may sign up for an account at http://windows.azure.com. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Report Builder 3.0, available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=6116. SQL Server Management Studio installed with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2. If you do not have it installed, SQL Server Express Edition with management tools is available from http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/en/us/editions/express.aspx. The latest version of Syncfusion Essential Studio. If you do not have the full version installed you may download a free trial from http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/evaluation. The use of LINQPad from http://www.linqpad.net/ is optional. We will use LINQPad for running test queries. SQL Server Management Studio may also be used for this purpose.

Create a New SQL Azure Reporting Server

Sign in to the Windows Azure portal available at https://windows.azure.com/. Click on the Reporting option listed on the shortcut bar displayed in the left side of the portal view.

Syncfusion | Before We Get StartedSystem requirements

Create a new SQL Azure Reporting server link. You will then be prompted to fill in details on the region where your server instance will be located. Pick a location that will work for your needs.

Syncfusion | Create a New SQL Azure Reporting Server

The final step is to assign a user name and password for the servers administrator account. o Note: SQL Azure Reporting does not allow the administrator account to be named administrator.

After you are done with the wizard you should have a view similar to the view below. You may have to expand your Subscriptions tree node on the left to see status information on the server instance that you just created.

Syncfusion | Create a New SQL Azure Reporting Server

Create a new SQL Azure server

Now select the Database section and create a SQL Azure server.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

The steps are similar to the steps used to create the reporting server with one important exception. You will have to additionally configure firewall rules. There are at least two firewall rules that need to be configured.

When the firewall rules configuration dialog is displayed, selecting the Allow other Windows Azure services to access this server checkbox will add a special rule with IP address 0.0.0.0. o This rule is required for any Azure service, even the included database manager utility or the Reporting Server instances within Azure to be able to connect to the SQL Azure database.

Additionally for development purposes you need to provide access to the IP address that you are working from. If you click the Add button, a dialog will pop up displaying your current external IP address. You will need to add this also to allow access to SQL Azure through development tools available on your system. o o o Please note that if you are behind a dynamic IP address you may have to change this setting each time your IP address changes. It is also possible that you will want to provide access to a block of IP addresses if you work for an organization that has a pre-assigned block. Without this rule access to the SQL Azure system, tools such as LINQPad or SQL Server Management Studio will not work.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

Import data from the Northwind database

Now that you have created your database and reporting server, go ahead and import data into the SQL Azure database server. Create a new database by clicking the Create button. Call it Northwind. A SQL Azure compatible script with just the Northwind tables is available at the Bitbucket location linked below. https://bitbucket.org/danjebaraj/syncfusion-samples/src

Optional stepexport your own data to SQL Azure

Instead of using the provided Northwind script, you can also export any current database as a SQL Azure compatible script using SQL Server Management Studio. The steps given below are for SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2. Select the name of the database whose script you would like to generate. Right-click and then select TasksGenerate Scripts as shown below.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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The wizard that is displayed contains introductory information. You can skip the first page. The second page allows you to export all objects or selected ones. You can change these settings in accordance with your needs. For our purposes, we will only generate table information.

When the next step is displayed, click the Advanced button.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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In the advanced settings dialog that is displayed, the two settings that need to be changed are marked in the image below.

Note: The generated file appears to contain settings for UNCLUSTERED keys. These are not supported under SQL Azure. We need to go through and change the keys to CLUSTERED in order for the schema and data to be successfully imported into SQL Azure. Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server 12

Correct format example CONSTRAINT [PK_Suppliers] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED

Import data into SQL Azure

The final step is to complete the import. You can use LINQPad for this, but SQL Server Management Studio should work equally well for your needs. Copy the Fully Qualified DNS Name of the SQL Azure server instance.

With LINQPad, click Add connection, select the LINQ to SQL driver and then the settings marked in the image below.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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You can then click the Test button to validate that all is set up properly. After you have added a connection to the server, go ahead and create a new query window and select the Northwind database reference from the Database drop-down list.

Note: SQL Azure does not support switching contexts with the USE statement. You will have to explicitly select the database against which the query is to be executed as shown below.

Run the script that you obtained earlier to import data and schema into the Northwind database. If all goes well you should see a confirmation message.

Configure a shared data source inside the reporting server

We now have to configure a shared data source whose metadata can be consumed to produce a report. Detailed steps are given below. Click on the Create Data Source button.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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Obtain the connection string from the database server.

Use the connection string and credential information to create a shared data source.

Note: Remove the password setting from the copied connection string. We will provide the password separately under the Connect using: section as shown in the following screenshot.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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Use Microsoft Report Builder to build the report

We are now ready to build our report. You can now open the Report Builder tool that you would have installed earlier. When Report Builder comes up it displays a wizard interface. We can simply select the Blank report option and then close the wizard.

The next step is to connect our new report to the SQL Azure Reporting Server instance we had created earlier.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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The next step is to configure a data source for our report. Right-click the Data Sources entry under the Report Data window. Click the Add data source option that will be displayed. A wizard will then be displayed.

Select the Use a shared connection or report model option and then click Browse to select the shared data source that we created earlier on the SQL Azure Reporting server. Now that we have a data source, we can create a dataset. Right-click on the Datasets entry under the Report Model window. Select the Add a dataset option that is displayed. Apply the settings shown below. We used the query designer to build a simple query that selects all customers in the Northwind databases Customers table.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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The next step is to design the structure of the report and save it on the server. Insert a table and add fields to it by dragging and dropping from the dataset that we just created. The resulting report should be similar to the report shown below.

We can now go ahead and save the report. We will be prompted for a name and the report will be stored on the SQL Azure Reporting server. You can now click on the Run option within the Report Builder to preview the report. After this you can exit the Report Builder application.

Our report is complete and has been deployed to a reporting server instance. Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server 18

Viewing SQL Azure report from your WPF or Silverlight application

Please download the WPF RDL viewer sample available from the link below. https://bitbucket.org/danjebaraj/syncfusion-samples/src Please note that you will need to have a full or evaluation version of Syncfusion Essential Studio (Enterprise or Reporting Edition) 2012 Volume 1 or later installed on your machine in order to build this sample. Open app.config and change the settings below to values that pertain to your server instance.
<appSettings> <add key="user" value="report-user-name"/> <add key="password" value="report-password"/> <add key="db-user" value="db-user-name"/> <add key="db-password" value="db-user-password"/> <add key="reportServerUrl" value="https://report-servername.reporting.windows.net/reportserver"/> <add key="reportFileName" value="/report-name-or-path"/> </appSettings>

Note: One aspect to note is that the report is being rendered locally on the client system. Data and schema information for the report come from the server. The report viewer is not using the server for rendering purposes. Since the rendering is being accomplished on the client system, you will have to separately pass in credentials (db-user-name and db-password) for the SQL Azure data source in addition to credentials for the SQL Azure report itself (report-user-name and report-password settings). Build and run the project. You should see a screen similar to the one shown below.

Syncfusion | Create a new SQL Azure server

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There is not much code in the sample. The report viewer does most of the work. The only code we write is to set the credentials for the report and database instances.

That is all there is to it. A Silverlight sample may already be available by the time you read this, but if it is not please check back at the same Bitbucket location in a couple of days. We will be adding it shortly.

Summary
Cloud-based reporting with SQL Azure Reporting is a powerful way to produce and deploy reports in a seamless manner. Microsoft provides viewers for Windows Forms and ASP.NET. Syncfusion adds viewers1 for Silverlight and WPF, making it possible to natively integrate SQL Azure reports into your Silverlight and WPF projects.

Syncfusion also provides RDL rendering systems for RDLC files that operate purely on the client with no need to

access a reporting server instance.

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With SQL Azure and SQL Azure Reporting, world-class reporting is now within the grasp of most organizations without regard to the size of their IT team. We firmly believe that SQL Azure Reporting is a remarkable product that will change how reports are prepared and consumed.

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