SSRS Interview Questions - Part 3 of 3 (On Applications from TK 70-448)

Case Scenario 1: Building Reports for the AdventureWorks Intranet

You have just successfully installed SSRS 2008. You have also created two shared data sources: one configured to retrieve data from the AdventureWorks relational database and the other to retrieve information from a sales and marketing data mart stored in an OLAP database. The data mart is populated once a week. The schemas of the relational and OLAP databases are the same as the sample databases provided by SQL Server 2008. You are the main developer of a set of reports that will be used in the AdventureWorks portal, and you need to handle the following requirements:

1. Your end users want a report that gives them near real-time information about sales by Product Category, Product Subcategory, and Product model. The report should show only the past week’s sales and should have only three columns: Name, Quantity, and Amount. Users also want the ability to drill through the report from summary information to greater detail. You do not want to use the Report Wizard. Given these requirements, what is the best way to create the report? Answer.
You can add a new report to the SSRS solution to satisfy this user requirement. Create a dataset that uses the AdventureWorks relational database. In the dataset’s query, filter the information to retrieve only the last week’s sales by product category, subcategory, and model. Use a Table data region and create two additional groupings, one by category and another by subcategory. Set the initial visibility status of the Subcategory and Detail rows to hidden, the toggle property of the Subcategory grouping to change based on Category, and the toggle property of the Detail grouping to change based on Subcategory.
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2. Your end users want a pivot table report that has Categories, Subcategories, and Models as columns and Year, Quarter, and Month as rows. The cell data should be filled with sales amount information. The information does not need to be real time. Given these requirements, what is the best way to create the report? Answer.


For this requirement, you can use the Report Wizard to create the report. On the Data Source page, select the multidimensional database, and then use the MDX Query Builder to create the MDX query. In the Data pane, drag the Product Model Categories hierarchy, the Date.Calendar hierarchy, and the SalesAmount measure onto the Results pane. Remove the Calendar Semester and Calendar data levels. Select a matrix report, and then assign the date-related information to columns and the product category information to the rows. Last, assign the amount as detail information.
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Case Scenario 2: Creating a Reporting Services Infrastructure

You just successfully installed SSRS 2008. You also created two shared data sources: one configured to retrieve data from the AdventureWorks relational database and the other configured to retrieve information from a marketing/sales data mart stored in an online analytical processing (OLAP) database. The data mart is populated once a week. The schemas of the relational and OLAP databases are the same as the sample databases provided by SQL Server 2008. You will be the main developer of a set of reports that will be used in the AdventureWorks portal, and you need to address the following requirements:

1. End users want the ability to create their own reports. The users are knowledge workers who have Excel expertise but no database experience. What is the best way to create the reports, without giving end users direct access to the database? How will you build the infrastructure? Answer.
You can configure report models that will let users create their own reports. You need to create two separate models, one for the relational engine and another for the SSAS database. The relational database model should be created and configured in BIDS, and the OLAP data source should be created from SSMS or Report Manager.
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2. In the previous version of the reports, users had a set of reports that were identical to each other except that each report grouped information at different levels of the organization. Users still want the flexibility to look at the information grouped in different ways, but you want to build a single report rather than multiple reports. Given these requirements, what is the best way to create the new report? Answer.


You could create a parameterized report that prompts the user for the desired level of aggregation and then dynamically creates the group by statement. Alternatively, you could use the same query for all the aggregation levels, use a table or matrix report item, and hide the grouping level based on the user selection. The main advantage of the first approach is that it pulls only the required data when the report is executed. The main advantage of the second option is that it allows the reuse of the cache if the report uses report caching.
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Case Scenario 3: Managing the Report Environment for Adventure Works

Reporting Services has been deployed in Adventure Works, and multiple departments are requesting access to the new server. However, some employees need to access reports from departments other than their own. At the same time, some users from the call center require the flexibility to create reports based on their customers.
Adventure Works uses a mixed database environment, with most applications running on SQL Server 2008 but some running on Oracle.

1. What is the general security infrastructure required to support the reporting needs of the Adventure Works departments and employees? Answer.
In general, because item-level roles are cumulative, for each department’s folder, you can assign the Browser role to the Active Directory group that represents the employees of each division. Additionally, you can add the Browser role to each person who needs access to more than one department’s folder.
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2. From a data source security standpoint, how can you satisfy the requirements to access both Oracle and SQL Server from Reporting Services? Answer.


To allow access to the Oracle databases, you will need to define a user with low-level privileges and store the credentials for that user in Report Server. For the SQL Server databases, given the fact that Adventure Works uses a Windows domain, you can enable Kerberos and use the Integrated Windows Authentication mechanism.
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Case Scenario 4: Scaling Out Your SSRS Servers

As you begin the process of setting up a SQL Server 2008 BI environment, you are planning out your hardware architecture. Your solution will consist of an SSRS installation that will access online analytical processing (OLAP) data in SSAS built from a SQL Server data mart. Your manager has approved two blade servers for SSRS so that the service can be configured for scale-out deployment—that will help to balance the workload and will provide some load balancing. Additionally, your system administrator has set up Network Load Balancing (NLB) to distribute the report requests. How will you handle the following two setup requirements?

1. Your SSRS implementation requires that you set up a scale-out deployment of SSRS on the two allocated servers. You have already installed the first SSRS instance on one of the servers that points to a Report Server database on your database server. You are now ready to install an instance of SSRS on the second computer. How do you use command-line utilities to install and configure this instance to be part of the SSRS scale-out deployment? Answer.
Because the first SSRS server has been installed and configured, your next task is to install an unconfigured instance of SSRS, without having the installation use the default configuration, on the second server. You will then need to configure the virtual directories through Reporting Services Configuration Manager and set the service accounts. Before joining the new instance to the scale-out deployment, connect the SSRS instance to the same Report Server database by using RSConfig.exe with the /c parameter. At this point, you should run the RSKeyMgmt.exe tool with the /j command parameter to join an existing SSRS. You need to run this command statement on the server that is already configured and then reference the new instance that will join the existing scale-out deployment.
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2. To prevent a single point of failure for SSRS, you also need to handle failures at the report server catalog database level. In the case of a server hardware failure, you do not want the SSRS implementation to also fail. Which is the best high-availability technology to use for this situation and why? Answer.


High availability at the database level can be handled by clustering, database mirroring, replication, or log shipping. However, the best choice is to use clustering. Clustering will prevent a server hardware failure from affecting the SSRS implementation, as the Database Engine will fail over to another available node in the cluster. In addition, this will be seamless to Reporting Services, as the database connection uses the virtual instance name of the database server, which also moves to the other server. With the other technologies, the SSRS implementation would need the catalog database connection to be repointed to the backup database from the mirroring, log shipping, or replication.
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