Choosing an RDBMS for Reporting Services....

Hi All,
We would like to use as much of the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
functionality as is possible, even though we (as a firm) are standardised on
Sybase...
I've been reading the documentation/information and there is a ton out
there!!! My main question is - is it possible to use Reporting Services as a
platform if the core data store is not SQL Server 2005 but Sybase (as in our
case).
I was wondering whether someone could help by simply listing one liners (at
a high level) showing what we lose out on if we use Sybase as the data store,
but Reporting Services as our BI platform?
Kind regards,
DJExcept that Sybase is awful (spoken from experience) there is no problem
reporting off of it. I have extensive experience doing so. Initially all of
my reports were against Sybase and it is only in the last year that my
reports are against both Sybase and SQL Server.
You do have to have SQL Server DB around as the object/metadata store for
RS. But, you can have it used only for that and all the data you are
reporting off of can be from Sybase.
There is absolutely no difference in functionality. Everything works the
same reporting against Sybase versus SQL Server. When using parameters in
your queries or passing parameters to your stored procedures they are
unnamed parameters but this is pretty minor.
I.e.
Select something from sometable where anotherfield = @.MyParam
versus
Select something from sometable where anotherfield = ?
You can call the parameter anything you want in RS and then there is a
screen where you map (in the order the ? appear) each parameter to what the
RS parameter is. In reality this mapping happens with named parameters as
well it is just that RS does this for you automatically. With unnamed
parameters RS creates the parameters for you but they have names like
parameter1, parameter2. I don't like that so I create my own parameters and
remap them. If this is confusing, don't worry about it, it is not hard.
Stored procedures work fine, I use them all the time.
I have found that using the ODBC driver works best, I had some flakyness
with the OLEDB provider. I use 12.5.1 version of Sybase, extensively.
Hope that helps.
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"Deejjaayy" <Deejjaayy@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:E9D070E6-B114-4AD9-9386-DCF66DA4909C@.microsoft.com...
> Hi All,
> We would like to use as much of the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
> functionality as is possible, even though we (as a firm) are standardised
> on
> Sybase...
> I've been reading the documentation/information and there is a ton out
> there!!! My main question is - is it possible to use Reporting Services as
> a
> platform if the core data store is not SQL Server 2005 but Sybase (as in
> our
> case).
> I was wondering whether someone could help by simply listing one liners
> (at
> a high level) showing what we lose out on if we use Sybase as the data
> store,
> but Reporting Services as our BI platform?
> Kind regards,
> DJ
>|||Hi Bruce,
Very many thanks for taking the time to answer - it is very much
appreciated! Your comments have been very useful, especially as we're trying
to talk management into going for MS Sql Server...
Once again, thanks...
DJ
"Bruce L-C [MVP]" wrote:
> Except that Sybase is awful (spoken from experience) there is no problem
> reporting off of it. I have extensive experience doing so. Initially all of
> my reports were against Sybase and it is only in the last year that my
> reports are against both Sybase and SQL Server.
> You do have to have SQL Server DB around as the object/metadata store for
> RS. But, you can have it used only for that and all the data you are
> reporting off of can be from Sybase.
> There is absolutely no difference in functionality. Everything works the
> same reporting against Sybase versus SQL Server. When using parameters in
> your queries or passing parameters to your stored procedures they are
> unnamed parameters but this is pretty minor.
> I.e.
> Select something from sometable where anotherfield = @.MyParam
> versus
> Select something from sometable where anotherfield = ?
> You can call the parameter anything you want in RS and then there is a
> screen where you map (in the order the ? appear) each parameter to what the
> RS parameter is. In reality this mapping happens with named parameters as
> well it is just that RS does this for you automatically. With unnamed
> parameters RS creates the parameters for you but they have names like
> parameter1, parameter2. I don't like that so I create my own parameters and
> remap them. If this is confusing, don't worry about it, it is not hard.
> Stored procedures work fine, I use them all the time.
> I have found that using the ODBC driver works best, I had some flakyness
> with the OLEDB provider. I use 12.5.1 version of Sybase, extensively.
> Hope that helps.
>
> --
> Bruce Loehle-Conger
> MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
>
> "Deejjaayy" <Deejjaayy@.discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:E9D070E6-B114-4AD9-9386-DCF66DA4909C@.microsoft.com...
> > Hi All,
> >
> > We would like to use as much of the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
> > functionality as is possible, even though we (as a firm) are standardised
> > on
> > Sybase...
> >
> > I've been reading the documentation/information and there is a ton out
> > there!!! My main question is - is it possible to use Reporting Services as
> > a
> > platform if the core data store is not SQL Server 2005 but Sybase (as in
> > our
> > case).
> >
> > I was wondering whether someone could help by simply listing one liners
> > (at
> > a high level) showing what we lose out on if we use Sybase as the data
> > store,
> > but Reporting Services as our BI platform?
> >
> > Kind regards,
> > DJ
> >
>
>|||Hi Bruce,
I found your comments very informative. I am working on a similar set-up
(Sybase and SQL Reporting Services)
My data will be stored in Sybase as XML. Can Reporting Service import XML in
the same manner as it would relational data?
Regards
Ken|||Bruce,
I've done what you said with Syabse and unnamed parameters in SQL 2000,
but we upgraded to SQL 2005 yesterday an now my reports where I set the
? to a variable
decare @.x varchar(10)
select @.x = ?
...doesn't work. It's not that I get an error. I just don't get data. I
am having a similar issue with If statements. My IF statements don't
work with the sybase ODBC driver.
Any suggestions? I have an open ticket with Microsoft as this has made
my reporting server not usable.
Luke
Bruce L-C [MVP] wrote:
> Except that Sybase is awful (spoken from experience) there is no problem
> reporting off of it. I have extensive experience doing so. Initially all of
> my reports were against Sybase and it is only in the last year that my
> reports are against both Sybase and SQL Server.
> You do have to have SQL Server DB around as the object/metadata store for
> RS. But, you can have it used only for that and all the data you are
> reporting off of can be from Sybase.
> There is absolutely no difference in functionality. Everything works the
> same reporting against Sybase versus SQL Server. When using parameters in
> your queries or passing parameters to your stored procedures they are
> unnamed parameters but this is pretty minor.
> I.e.
> Select something from sometable where anotherfield = @.MyParam
> versus
> Select something from sometable where anotherfield = ?
> You can call the parameter anything you want in RS and then there is a
> screen where you map (in the order the ? appear) each parameter to what the
> RS parameter is. In reality this mapping happens with named parameters as
> well it is just that RS does this for you automatically. With unnamed
> parameters RS creates the parameters for you but they have names like
> parameter1, parameter2. I don't like that so I create my own parameters and
> remap them. If this is confusing, don't worry about it, it is not hard.
> Stored procedures work fine, I use them all the time.
> I have found that using the ODBC driver works best, I had some flakyness
> with the OLEDB provider. I use 12.5.1 version of Sybase, extensively.
> Hope that helps.
>
> --
> Bruce Loehle-Conger
> MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
>|||I didn't see any issue when I upgraded.
One point, it looks like you are embedding T-SQL in your report. If you are
doing this I would think you should just create a stored procedure in
Sybase. Very seldom is there a need to do this in RS.
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"Luke" <lukeguerrant@.gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1153758597.505092.190680@.75g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Bruce,
> I've done what you said with Syabse and unnamed parameters in SQL 2000,
> but we upgraded to SQL 2005 yesterday an now my reports where I set the
> ? to a variable
> decare @.x varchar(10)
> select @.x = ?
> ...doesn't work. It's not that I get an error. I just don't get data. I
> am having a similar issue with If statements. My IF statements don't
> work with the sybase ODBC driver.
> Any suggestions? I have an open ticket with Microsoft as this has made
> my reporting server not usable.
> Luke
>
> Bruce L-C [MVP] wrote:
>> Except that Sybase is awful (spoken from experience) there is no problem
>> reporting off of it. I have extensive experience doing so. Initially all
>> of
>> my reports were against Sybase and it is only in the last year that my
>> reports are against both Sybase and SQL Server.
>> You do have to have SQL Server DB around as the object/metadata store for
>> RS. But, you can have it used only for that and all the data you are
>> reporting off of can be from Sybase.
>> There is absolutely no difference in functionality. Everything works the
>> same reporting against Sybase versus SQL Server. When using parameters in
>> your queries or passing parameters to your stored procedures they are
>> unnamed parameters but this is pretty minor.
>> I.e.
>> Select something from sometable where anotherfield = @.MyParam
>> versus
>> Select something from sometable where anotherfield = ?
>> You can call the parameter anything you want in RS and then there is a
>> screen where you map (in the order the ? appear) each parameter to what
>> the
>> RS parameter is. In reality this mapping happens with named parameters as
>> well it is just that RS does this for you automatically. With unnamed
>> parameters RS creates the parameters for you but they have names like
>> parameter1, parameter2. I don't like that so I create my own parameters
>> and
>> remap them. If this is confusing, don't worry about it, it is not hard.
>> Stored procedures work fine, I use them all the time.
>> I have found that using the ODBC driver works best, I had some flakyness
>> with the OLEDB provider. I use 12.5.1 version of Sybase, extensively.
>> Hope that helps.
>>
>> --
>> Bruce Loehle-Conger
>> MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
>>
>