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Format a Reporting Services script file

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A Reporting Services script is a Visual Basic code file, written against a proxy that is built on Web Service Description Language (WSDL), which defines the Reporting Services SOAP API. A script file is stored as a Unicode or UTF-8 text file with the extension .rss.

The script file acts as a Visual Basic module and can contain user-defined procedures and module-level variables. For the script file to run successfully, it must contain a Main procedure. The Main procedure is the first procedure that is accessed when your script file runs. Main is where you can add your Web service operations and run your user defined subprocedures. The following code creates a Main procedure:

vbnet 
Public Sub Main()
    ' Your code goes here.
End Sub

The script environment automatically connects to the report server, creates the Web proxy class, and generates a reference variable (rs) to the Web service proxy object. Individual statements you create only need to refer to the rs module-level variable, to perform any of the Web service operations available in the Web service library. The following Visual Basic code calls the Web service ListChildren method from within a script file:

vbnet 
Public Sub Main()
    Dim items() As CatalogItem
    items = rs.ListChildren("/", True)

    Dim item As CatalogItem
    For Each item In items
        Console.WriteLine(item.Name)
    Next item
End Sub

User credentials are managed by the script environment and passed through command prompt arguments using RS.exe. Although you can use the rs variable to set the authentication of the Web service, you should use the script environment instead. You don't need to authenticate the Web service in the script file. For more information about authenticating the script environment, see RS.exe utility (SSRS).

You don't declare namespaces within the script file. The scripting environment makes several useful Microsoft .NET Framework namespaces available to you: System.Web.Services, System.Web.Services.Protocols, System.Xml, and System.IO.

For script samples, see SQL Server Reporting Services Product Samples.

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