SSRS Newbie -- Question on combining data from different instances in 1 report

  • Hi All,

    I'm just learning on SSRS and needed clarification. If I want to create a simple report that outputs a list with the names of my current sql server instances and the version information, how do i set up the report to pull the information from different servers?

    Most tutorials show beginners how to create a simple data source/dataset but nothing on combining the data of multiple instances into 1 report.

    Thanks for any input.

  • Typically, and this counts for a lot of sources, you do some sort of data gathering and put everything in one place (in BI terms this is called ETL and data warehouse) and then build your report on top of it.

    With SSIS (Integration Services) you can easily loop over your servers and gather the required information and store it somewhere in a table.

    If you want to do everything in SSRS, you'd have to build a dataset for each server (unless you use linked servers so you can query from one server). The problem is that a tablix can use only one dataset. So you'd have to add a tablix for each server on your report, which is a maintenance nightmare.

    Need an answer? No, you need a question
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    MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP

  • Ahhh...Makes perfect sense with incorporating SSIS. Thanks again.

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