Creating SQL Server Reporting Services templates

According to MSDN blogger Russell Christopher, there's a way to create templates in SSRS 2005, although it does requires a little work. Assuming you have the SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio installed, go to the following directory: \Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\ProjectItems\ReportProject. There, you should see an .RDL document simply named, REPORT.RDL. This is the basic template for all SSRS projects, so it can be edited as needed to create a new basic template from which all future reports can be derived. When you do this, the new items should show up in the Installed Templates area of the Add New Item dialog.

It's also possible to create copies of the REPORT.RDL file, modify those, and drop them back into the directory. When the user chooses to create a new report, they'll then have the option to pick one of the

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other reports in that directory. Note that the IDE will need to be closed and reopened for the new templates to show up. They're not automatically detected while the program is still running.

There's a few limitations to the way this works. First, the above technique will only work with SQL Server BIDS, as opposed to the full conventional version of Visual Studio 2005. You can't use Visual Studio 2005's RDL builder (which generates files with the extension .RDLC) to work with these templates.

Another big limitation involves Report Builder, which is the ad-hoc client-side reporting system in SQL Server 2005. Its design allows a user to quickly generate reports without needing to know much about the database schema. Sadly, .RDL templates cannot be used in conjunction with Report Builder to accelerate development there — unless, according to Bob Meyers, you strictly follow several rules about the report design:

This might prove to be too limiting for many people, but if these things don't pose a problem, it can be a bit of a timesaver.

An additional approach, documented on the Ureader.com Microsoft community, talks about how to use a slight variant of this technique to create custom template elements. For instance, a corporate logo with no data source (since it's not needed) — for reuse in other projects.

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