A Report to Display and Edit User 'Rights'

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the content posted at http://www.sqlservercentral.com/columnists/gwilson/areporttodisplayandedituserrights.asp

  • Hi,

    I don't have a lot to say about this, except that I think this idea is brilliant in its simplicity. I've been using Reporting Services for about 2 years now, and I would never have thought of this (maybe I'm just dumb??). As a DW developer, I'm often asked for seemingly simple things like - "how can our admin user trigger a month-end process to start once we're happy with the source data". I give them various options, all of which are usually pretty poor, eg how about 'right-click, start job' in enterprise manager? I guess this is because I have virtually no App Dev skills, and can't just put together a nice little webpage or desktop app. I suppose I can now have a report with a list of admin tasks (sql agent jobs) which are all hyperlinks which will go away and sp_StartJob the job when clicked. Handy!

    Matt.

  • Wonderful!  In meeting just yesterday expressing the same type requirements for a DR  tracking application. I also have been using RS and now SSRS since it came out.  We are very interested in editing via a report because there is so much functionality built in RS that our developers sometimes have difficulty providing via the web app.

    Could you provide and example of the hyperlink code/expression that calls the sproc again and the sproc itself?  Can't quite get my brain around it.  But then it's awful early!

    AB

  • I think this is exceptional. My biggest concern with something like this however is you have to be sure you have your security nailed. Since the hyperlink is a set of querystring commands you open the potentials a lot for someone to alter without recourse. Verify you secuirty model to be sure nothing unexpected happens and hire someone to do an ethical hack to see if this has any potential loopholes. As you are using RS in a non-standard way you can be sure MS will not cover you if someone get's in where they should not be.

  • Reporting = R

    Applications = CRUD 

  • On the surface, this looks like a wonderful feature - so long as Microsoft doesn't close a loophole or something.  I can think of several ways we could use this for the projects I work on; and it could increase the users productivity.  I can also see it getting very out-of-hand, and having users request processes that really should not fit in a reporting session.  Could be a double-edged sword.


    Here there be dragons...,

    Steph Brown

  • I have to agree that Reporting should be reads. Applications should be CRUD. But then you have the argument, Reporting Services is an Application. =)

    This could work with limited exposure (such as working through a checklist) but could also be dangerous if someone tries to make this thier data management tool.

    Good Article, Clever solution.

    For anything more than just marking a field status or flipping a bit on or off, I would recommend using the .NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0. They have made some nice improvements for data interaction.

  • Im going to go against the grain and say that I don't really care for the solution (though I appreciate what you were trying to accomplish). In general I dont think reports should modify base data. One alternative thats easy enough to manage without code would be linking the table into an Access mdb.

     

     

  • Is there anyway you could share the reporting solution source files with teh rest of us who are curious as to how you did this?  The article is great in showing that this can be done with RS but lacking in how it's done and a good article shoudl do both

     

    Kindest Regards,

    Just say No to Facebook!
  • Was the article pulled?

  • One small problem I've disvovered with this is that if you refresh the report then the sp is executed again with the sasme parameters and the data is updated again.

    Just thought everyone needed to be aware of this, it's not obvious until you try it.

  • Cool idea. ....... now you've shown us that it can be done, perhaps you'd like to show us just how to do it ! I'm buy learning VB & Reporting and Analysis services, and actual examples (rather that "you can do this" assertions) really are much more valuable ! Personally, I haven't the foggiest idea of how to implement this

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