In one week I am supposed to come up with the following:
Using an existing, working, parameterized SSRS report,
1) Check for work to do. If work is found, go to step 2, otherwise pause for one minute and repeat step 1.
2) Run the report using the two parameters in the work found in step 1, outputting to a file (pdf or tif or something).
3) When that report has completely finished printing, go back to step 1.
I will handle step 1. But I have little experience with SSRS and don't even know where to begin with step 2 and 3. Scheduling or subscribing to reports doesn't seem like the right thing because there IS no schedule and we don't know the parameters ahead of time. Until the work is found, nothing can be done. It doesn't make sense to try to run a report when there's nothing to report on and before any parameters are known.
An additional complication is that I need to also create an XML document that pairs with the outputted pdf file with metadata about the final destination of the file. One piece of this extra information is one of the parameters in the report, but some of the extra information is only known by the the process that kicks off the reports. So ideally, I would be able to cotnrol the filename of the pdf so that when I see it appear I can write out the xml metadata for it. Any other scheme that would work is fine, too. If necessary I could add all the metadata as parameters in the report, but I still need to create the matching XML file somehow.
Would you please give me some ideas about how to get started? I'm looking for The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work.
Also, I have almost no experience with .Net. If some piece has to be .Net I'll do it, but with just one week to get this done I hate to get bogged down in an unfamiliar technology. I'll probably be working overtime this weekend but I have other work to do besides this in the meantime. I'm hoping it's just a few hours of overtime and not 18-hour days...
I started looking into the web services for SSRS but decided to ask some more experienced people what they recommend.
Using an existing, working, parameterized SSRS report,
1) Check for work to do. If work is found, go to step 2, otherwise pause for one minute and repeat step 1.
2) Run the report using the two parameters in the work found in step 1, outputting to a file (pdf or tif or something).
3) When that report has completely finished printing, go back to step 1.
I will handle step 1. But I have little experience with SSRS and don't even know where to begin with step 2 and 3. Scheduling or subscribing to reports doesn't seem like the right thing because there IS no schedule and we don't know the parameters ahead of time. Until the work is found, nothing can be done. It doesn't make sense to try to run a report when there's nothing to report on and before any parameters are known.
An additional complication is that I need to also create an XML document that pairs with the outputted pdf file with metadata about the final destination of the file. One piece of this extra information is one of the parameters in the report, but some of the extra information is only known by the the process that kicks off the reports. So ideally, I would be able to cotnrol the filename of the pdf so that when I see it appear I can write out the xml metadata for it. Any other scheme that would work is fine, too. If necessary I could add all the metadata as parameters in the report, but I still need to create the matching XML file somehow.
Would you please give me some ideas about how to get started? I'm looking for The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work.
Also, I have almost no experience with .Net. If some piece has to be .Net I'll do it, but with just one week to get this done I hate to get bogged down in an unfamiliar technology. I'll probably be working overtime this weekend but I have other work to do besides this in the meantime. I'm hoping it's just a few hours of overtime and not 18-hour days...
I started looking into the web services for SSRS but decided to ask some more experienced people what they recommend.