Changing the dataset on a server executed SSRS Report

Question

I'm trying to narrow down the results returned from a server generated SSRS report, but the customer is requesting too many fields to do be able to do it easily with parameters into a predefined SQL statement.

Is it possible to pass a statement into the reporting server from .NET that the server will execute as its datasource, instead of the preconfigured one? Either the complete statement or the WHERE clause would be fine.

If not, is it possible to eval a parameter sent into a stored procedure? I'm aware of the security implications.

Answer 1

Architecturally speaking, if the customer is requesting reports with infeasible amounts of parameters they might want to consider creating an Analysis Services model instead and using Excel or another tool to slice and dice the data to their hearts content.

I can't speak to the .NET option, but you can definitely use a stored procedure in a report data set, but I'm not sure how that would help you as it would still require parameters to be passed to it.

Answer 2

We decided to route a parameter into a stored procedure, which executes a sql query using the parameter. The other parameters use the Prompt as a friendlyname and the Name as the column name, and the program constructs a where clause from this information and passes it into the query parameter of the report. It's not a perfect solution, but we've closed all holes for injection we could and it works. Sometimes you've got to be happy with that.