November 4, 2015 at 3:23 pm
I have a client with data for form letters that they have sent stored in a database table. For legal purposes, they want to create a PDF image of every letter they have sent, and create a link in another table to the file location where the PDF lives.
I had the thought of creating the "letter" as an SSRS report, and using SSIS to pump the table key into the report and automatically save the results as a PDF file in a directory, then update the db with a pointer to the pdf from an execute sql step or something.
The concern I have is I've never used SSRS in effectively a batch mode to create pdf files, and I'm not sure how efficient this will be -- especially since I'm going to need to create 150,000 pdf files. That's a long SSIS loop. Is this feasible, or should I be looking at something like a word mail merge done in batches and maybe encoding the db key in the file name and having a later task run and build the db link?
November 12, 2015 at 6:28 am
Yes, it is feasible.
I would break it down in two different steps, Request and Update, is since SSRS track all requests, you can always go back into the Report database to get the result and output of your requests to update the db with your pointer.
Automated request Options:
A)Use scheduled reports within SSRS. If it is a one time job this would be the easiest, I would break down in smaller batches.
B).Net API or Report server URL (PowerShell, SSIS or any other programming environment)
After you have generated the reports, then the final step of updating the db with the pointer
Note, if you use Word mail merge, you actually have to open Word in order to save the file to a PDF file.
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