Visual Studio 2005 Reports and Windows 7

Question

We have recently upgraded to windows 7 and have noticed that there are compatibility issues with my previous version of MS visual Studio 2005.

From taking a look around the web I believe that this issue is due to SP1 for Windows 7. My organisation will not get rid of SP1 just for one or two developers so I need to figure out a work around.

This is the issue... I have an old MS visual studio website that has a report located on the home. This report was created in MS VS 2005.

Other versions of Visual Studio in have are 2010 and 2012. I have tried to convert the 2005 report into 2010 and this does state that it has been converted but I still cant open or do anything with the report. My 2005 web site is too large to convert or move into 2010 and we can still maintain this 2005 site by opening this up in 2010. It just seems to be a problem with the 2005 report.

I'm running out of options to make a simple change to a report. Anyone else got any ideas? I have even tried to create this report in 2010 and then add this to my 2005 site but this doesn't work.

Regards Betty.

Answer 1

You say a report and then say that it is a whole site? Why not run a second site in tandom? Make a whole new site and name it differently like

http:// (servername)/Reports2012

Then put reports there. You cannot open a converted report in a site that is for a prior version, you can view it in Microsoft Business Intelligence Studio, BIDS, which is an add on to Visual Studio. If you can upgrade but cannot view it there, there is something wrong with the language file potentially. I would then make a copy of it in the old 2005 BIDS, then take that copy and see if you can upgrade that and if it will work. If that STILL does not work you could make a test report in BIDS 2010(SQL 2012 works on VS 2010, yes weird but true) to assure you can create reports there. Many times people try to open SQL Server 2012 Reports on VS 2012 and it won't work. You need 2010 add on you can find it under All Programs>MS SQL Server 2012>SQL Server Data Tools(They made the naming very confusing as it opens up and display BIDS, but calls itself 'Data Tools' under the programs). Every other version of SSRS lines up with that year of SQL Server to that year of VS. Not 2012.

If the report upgrade still does not work, yet you can create a run a new report fine; I would suggest potentially opening up the file dircectly. Your projects in a Reports solution generally have a file '(something).rdl' that RDL is the actual file and is just XML markup of the language. This is a last resort as you are essentially trying to do manually what the upgrade is failing to do in the xml. You merely copy a working report, and then paste the parts of the old report into their correct sections. Ensure the XML is valid as well.

If you cannot manage that to work you will need to recreate the report from scratch.