Thursday, 1 May 2014

SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) Interview Questions - Part 1



SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) Interview Questions - Part 1
 
Q: What is SSRS?
SQL Server Reporting Service is one of the server-based software systems that generate reports developed by Microsoft. It is used for preparing and delivering interactive and variety of printed reports. It is administered through an interface that is web based. Reporting services utilizes a web service interface for supporting and developing of customized reporting applicatons. It can be competed with Crystal Reports and other business intelligent tools.
Q: Explain SSRS Architecture?
Reporting services architecture is comprises of integrated components. It is multi-tiered, included with application, server and data layers. This architecture is scalable and modular. A single installation can be used across multiple computers. It includes the following components: - Report Manager, Reporting Designer, Browser Types Supported by Reporting services, Report server, Report server command line utilities, Report Server Database, Reporting Services Extensibility, Data sources that is supported by Reporting Services.
Q: Explain Reporting Life Cycye?
The Reporting Lifecycle includes - Report designing – The designing is done in Visual Studio Report Designer. It generates a class which embodies the Report Definition. - Report processing – The processing includes binging the report definition with data from the report data source. It performs on all grouping, sorting and filtering calculations. The expressions are evaluated except the page header, footer and section items. Later it fires the Binding event and Bound event. As a result of the processing, it produces Report Instance. Report instance may be persisted and stored which can be rendered at a later point of time. - Report Rendering: Report rendering starts by passing the Report Instance to a specific rendering extension (HTML or PDF formats). The instance of reports is paged if paging supported by output format. The expressions of items are evaluated in the page header and footer sections for every page. As a final step, the report is rendered to the specific output document.
Q: How to finetune Reports?
To tune-up the Reporting Services, follow the below mentioned ways: - Expand the Server or utilizing the reporting services of another database server. For better embedding of report contents, report application’s logic and characteristics can have a duplicate copy of data. - Replication of data continuously. Using nolock, the issues of locking can well be resolved and the performance of the query can be improved. This can be done by using dirty read at the time of duplicating the data is unavailable.
Q: What are Data Driven Subscriptions?
Reporting Services provides data-driven subscriptions so that you can customize the distribution of a report based on dynamic subscriber data. Data-driven subscriptions are intended for the following kinds of scenarios: Distributing reports to a large recipient pool whose membership may change from one distribution to the next. For example distribute a monthly report to all current customers. Distributing reports to a specific group of recipients based on predefined criteria. For example send a sales performance report to the top ten sales managers in an organization.
Q: What is Linked Report?
Q: What are different types of roles provided by SSRS?
Q: Difference between Logical Page an Physical Page in SSRS.
Logical page breaks are page breaks that you insert before or after report items or groups. Page breaks help to determine how the content is fitted to a report page for optimal viewing when rendering or exporting the report. The following rules apply when rendering logical page breaks: Logical page breaks are ignored for report items that are constantly hidden and for report items where the visibility is controlled by clicking another report item. Logical page breaks are applied on conditionally visible items if they are currently visible at the time the report is rendered. Space is preserved between the report item with the logical page break and its peer report items. Logical page breaks that are inserted before a report item push the report item down to the next page. The report item is rendered at the top of the next page. Logical page breaks defined on items in table or matrix cells are not kept. This does not apply to items in lists.
Q: User want only to display only pdf as export option in report Manager. How to acheive this?
Q: Name and Describe few console utilities for SSRS?
Q: Name few Endpoints exposed by SSRS 2012?
Q: Describe different Processing Modes offered by SSRS?
Q: When to Use Null Data driven Subscription?
Create a data-driven subscription that uses the Null Delivery Provider. When you specify the Null Delivery Provider as the method of delivery in the subscription, the report server targets the report server database as the delivery destination and uses a specialized rendering extension called the null rendering extension. In contrast with other delivery extensions, the Null Delivery Provider does not have delivery settings that you can configure through a subscription definition.
Q: How can you monitor the report Usage?
Q: How does the report manager work in SSRS?
Report manager is a web application. In SSRS it is accessed by a URL. The interface of this Report manager depends on the permissions of the user. This means to access any functionality or perform any task, the user must be assigned a role. A user with a role of full permissions can entire all the features and menus of the report. To configure the report manager, a URL needs to be defined.
Q: What are the Reporting Services components?
Reporting services components assist in development. These processing components include some tools that are used to create, manage and view reports. A report designer is used to create the reports. a report sever is used to execute and distribute reports. a report manager is used to manage the report server.
Q:SQL Server Reporting Services vs Crystal Reports.
Crystal reports are processed by IIS while SSRS have a report server. Caching in Crystal reports is available through cache server. On the other hand, caching in SSRS is available for Report history snapshots. Crystal reports have standards and user defined field labels. SSRS allows only user defined field labels.
Q: What is Report Builder?
Report Builder is a business-user, ad-hoc report design client that allows users to design reports based on the business terms (Report Builder model) they are familiar with, but without needing to understand database schemas or how to write SQL or MDX queries. Report Builder works with both SQL Server and Analysis Services data sources.
Q: How does Report Builder support Analysis Services cubes?
Report Builder supports relational SQL and Analysis Services data sources in SQL Server 2005. To create a model for Analysis Services cube, go to Report Manager or Management Studio, create a data source for your Analysis Services database, and then select the Generate Model option to create the model.
Q: How do users use Report Builder with SQL Server data sources?
While models that provide access to SQL Server Analysis Services are automatically generated on the report server, the Report Builder Model Designer can be used to generate or modify the models that are built on top of SQL Server relational databases. These model-building projects are a new type of project within a Visual Studio–based development shell.
Q: How do I get Report Builder to generate a parameter that can be set by users viewing the report?
In the filter dialog box, click the name of the criteria that you would like to prompt the user for when viewing the report. For example, for the criteria Order Year=2000, click Order Year. Select the Prompt option in the drop-down list.
Q: What new data source types were added in SSRS 2012?
In addition to the data source types available in SSRS 2005 (SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC, OLE DB), the following have been added in SSRS 2008: SQL Server 2005 Analysis Services SQL Server 2005 Integration Services SQL Server 2005 Report Builder Models XML (through URL and Web services) SAP
Q: How can I add Reporting Services reports to my application?
Visual Studio 2005 (Standard and Enterprise editions) contains a set of freely redistributable Report Viewer controls that make it easy to embed Reporting Services functionality into custom applications. Two versions of the Report Viewer exist, one for rich Windows client applications and one for ASP.NET applications.
Q: Do I need a report server to run reports in my application?
In addition to publishing reports to a report server, you can build reports using the Report Designer that is directly integrated with Visual Studio language projects. You can embed reports directly in any Windows Forms or ASP.NET Web application without access to a report server. The data access in embedded reports is a natural extension of the Visual Studio data facilities. Not only can you use traditional databases as a source of data for your reports, you can use object collections as well.
Q: Can you import Microsoft Excel data to SSRS?
Reporting Services does not import data. It only queries data in whatever format it is stored in their native storage system. I will assume that you're asking whether you can create reports and use Excel spreadsheets as data sources. The answer is Yes, Reporting Services supports a wide variety of data sources, including Excel files. You'll get the best performance with the built-in native .NET providers but you should be able to connect to any ODBC or OLE-DB data source, whether it comes from Microsoft or a third-party company.

No comments:

Post a Comment