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Troubleshoot Reporting Services Report Issues

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This topic helps you troubleshoot problems with Reporting Services report design, previewing a report, publishing a report to a report server in native mode or SharePoint mode, viewing a report on the report server, or exporting a report to a different file format.

Monitor Report Servers

You can use system and database tools to monitor report server activity. You can also view report server trace log files, or query the report server execution log for detailed information about specific reports. If you are using Performance Monitor, you can add performance counters for the Report Server Web service and Windows service to identity bottlenecks in on-demand or scheduled processing.
For more information, see Monitoring Report Server Performance.

View the Report Server Logs

Reporting Services records many internal and external events to log files that record data about specific reports, debugging information, HTTP requests and responses, and report server events. You can also create performance logs and select performance counters that specify which data to collect. The default directory for log files for a default installation is <drive>\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS130.MSSQLSERVER\Reporting Services\LogFiles.

For more information, see Reporting Services log files and sources.

In order to determine specifically whether report waits are due to data retrieval, report processing, or report rendering, use the Execution Log. For more information, see Report Server ExecutionLog and the ExecutionLog3 view.

View the Call Stack for Report Processing Error Messages on the Report Server

When you view a published report in Report Manager, you might see an error message that represents a general processing or rendering error. To see more information, you can view the call stack.

To view the call stack, log on to the report server by using the local administrator credentials, right-click the Report Manager page, and then click View Source. The call stack provides detailed context for the error message.

Use SQL Server Management Studio to Verify Queries and Credentials

You can use SQL Server Management Studio to validate complex queries before you include them in your report.

For more information, see Database Engine query editor and Manage Objects by using Object Explorer.

Analyze Problem Reports with Report Data Cached on the Client

When a report author creates a report in Business Intelligence Development Studio, the authoring client caches data as an .rdl.data file, which is used when you preview a report. Every time the query changes, the cache is updated. To debug report problems, it is sometimes useful to prevent the refresh for report data so that the data does not change when you are debugging.

To control whether SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) can only use cached data, add the following section to devenv.exe.config in the SQL Server Data Tools. The location of the default directory is: <drive>:Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE.

<system.diagnostics>  
      <switches>  
         <add name="Microsoft.ReportDesigner.ReportPreviewStore.ForceCache" value="1" />  
      </switches>  
   </system.diagnostics>

As long as the value is set to 1, only cached report data is used. Be sure to remove this section when you have finished debugging the report.

See Also

Errors and events (Reporting Services)

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