Here is another post in the Tools Tips and Tricks series which tells you some feature about SQL Nexus which is not widely used. Yes, SQL Nexus is one of my favorite tools (provided it is used correctly). Automation of analysis helps get the picture quickly but the co-relation of data has to be drawn by the person performing the analysis.

Today I shall show you how you can use custom reports feature by creating simple RDL files in Visual Studio and getting SQL Nexus to use them.

As you can see in the screenshot below, I have a few reports which are not part of the standard installation of SQL Nexus available on the CodePlex site.

I had built this report ages ago when RML Utilities didn’t have the option of drilling through the Interesting Events and fetching out the sub-class reason for the Interesting Event.

The report structure itself is quite simple. It uses the Shared Data Source “sqlnexus.rds” so that the database context can switch when you change the database name using the drop-down menu in the SQL Nexus tool. Then I created an Action Event to jump to a child report which is called “Event Drilldown.rdlc”. This gives you a view as shown in the screenshot below. This is showing you a on which database the AutoStats event was fired and what the reason for AutoStats kicking in.

Once you have the custom reports built, you can drop them in the following folder: %appdata%\SQLNexus\Reports. SQL Nexus will automatically pickup these reports when it is launched.

The two files that are used in the above example can be downloaded from here. You can dissect the structures of the report to understand what queries were used to fetch the data for the reports shown above.

The ReadTrace_Main report for RML Utilities provides this drill-down function currently using the “Interesting Events” link on the main dashboard under “Additional Reports”.

Have a good weekend and stay tuned to this series for more tips and tricks next week!

Download linke for RDL files: Client Report Definition (.rdlc) Files