Late last week I stumbled into a really informative conversation around how 2005 reports are “automagically” upgraded to 2008. Thought I’d post the broad strokes here in FAQ format for everyone’s use. Thanks to Robert Bruckner who contributed most of the information!
Q: If I upgrade my instance of SSRS 2005 to 2008, what happens to the reports in reportserver database? Do they get automatically upgraded?
A: Reports in the catalog are automatically upgraded from 2005 to 2008 when they are first run on the newly upgraded machine. Each report is upgraded only once, not each time it is run.
Q: If my report gets automatically upgraded to the 2008 schema, can I get my original 2005 report back somehow?
A: Yes, you can. The upgrade process does not actually delete the original 2005 report, but simply makes a copy of it and stores the compiled result. If you “Edit” the report using Report Manager (to download a copy of the RDL) or call GetReportDefinition(), the original 2005 report definition will be returned.
Q: What if the report doesn’t get upgraded for some reason – will it still run on 2008?
A: SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 has the ability to render reports using the new “on demand” engine, and the older 2005 engine.
Q: So, if my 2005 report gets automatically upgraded to the 2008 RDL schema, is there any way I can get the upgraded version (2008) out of the server for use elsewhere?
A: No. You’ll need to use BIDS or Report Builder (v2) to upgrade your 2005 report to the 2008 schema.
Q: I know that every once in a while, a 2005 report won’t auto-upgrade to 2008 successfully. How can I tell if a report I’m running is being rendered in 2005 or 2008 mode?
A: We attempt to upgrade a 2005 report to 2008 once and only once. If the process fails the first time, we don’t try again. To see which engine is being used to render a report, use the new ExecutionLog2 view in the reportserver database, examine the AdditionalInfo column and check the <ProcessingEngine> element. A value of 2 indicates the new 2008 “on demand” rendering engine was used, while a value of 1 means the older, 2005 engine was used.
if the auto upgrade from 2005 report to 2008 report fails then can we do it manually again ?
Thanks
There is no way to manually upgrade at the server. It happens automatically, or you need to grab the RDL and open it in BIDS 2008.
[...] Performance Point Blog has this FAQ that has a few good tidbits. The one that stuck out to me was the last one: “Q: I know that [...]
Is there a way to force 2005 Backward-Compatibility Mode on SSRS 2008? I’ve been looking around the ‘net and can’t see any info on this.
As far as I know, we will always run in 2008 mode where we can in order to take advantage of the new / better rendering architecture. We only drop back to 2005 when 2008 won’t work.
Out of curiousity, what “thing” in 2008 mode are you trying to avoid?
Update: Tried this on another SSRS 2008 DEV server, Rendered correctly.
Looked at the SQL Server Versions:
Bad: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP1) – 10.0.2531.0 (X64) Mar 29 2009 10:11:52 Copyright (c) 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation Express Edition with Advanced Services (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.1 (Build 7600: ) (VM)
Good: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (SP1) – 10.0.2766.0 (X64) Feb 25 2010 12:51:37 Copyright (c) 1988-2008 Microsoft Corporation Standard Edition (64-bit) on Windows NT 6.0 (Build 6002: Service Pack 2)
I will try Hotfix 2766 KB 979065.
Really? Very interesting!
So the hotfix worked, everything is functioning correctly now.
I did an in-place upgrade and data source for the report has spaces in it ‘my data source’, when I view the report it fails with the error message
“An error occurred during client rendering.
An error has occurred during report processing.
The data source ‘my_data_source’cannot be found. “. The data source name has underscores in its name. When I re-upload the same report with a different name and same data source it works. How can this be fixed without re-upload as I have over 500 reports that are failing.
Wanted to add to my previous question when I open the report in the designer the way it was developed the data source name in the designer was “my-data-source”.