Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Sorting data in Reporting Services

Most things come hard for me. Whether it's been work, school or play, nothing has come easy.

So it should be of no surprise, I had a hell of a time trying to figure out how to sort our custom TFS build report. It honestly took me about four hours to figure out all you needed to do is set a Sorting Expression on the report's table when in layout mode. Here is a good article that explains it in detail.

I was trying to modify the MDX query, which is nearly impossible, by using an ORDER function. That was getting me no where as I could not get the syntax figured out. So after lunch I decided to do a bit of research and fell into the TechNet article. And about five seconds later, I found my answer.

If you need to do some sorting, check this article out.

2 comments:

paso said...

Good to read that I'm not the only one struggling with reports for TFS. When we started, we made the mistake to change workitem definitions and mimic our old tracking workflow. As a result none of the default reports are working and because most of them use MDX directly (not using Design Mode)you need to hire an MDX specialist to get them working.
I think this area needs a lot of attention. Until a decent Report Designer becomes available we are stuck with very simple reports.

Mac Noland said...

Hey Paso! Yes, RS is a bear for us. We finally broke down and sent three of us to a three day course. Even then, we still struggle a bit as you need a freaking PHD to understand the MDX language.