Question

I’m using Report Builder 3.0 to create a report for use in SharePoint 2010. SQL Server 2008 R2 is the back end with Reporting Services in SharePoint Integrated Mode. One of the cool features of Report Builder 3.0 is the use of a SharePoint List as a data source, the setup for which is very straightforward–just give it the URL for the SharePoint List as the connection string and it works.

I eventually want to package this site as a Site Template including the report that lives in it, which means that the URL will need to be relative instead of absolute. So for example instead of this:

http://mainsite/subsite1/lists/mylist

… I need to specify something like this:

mylist

… so that when I package this as a Site Template and create a new site based on that template, the report will work with the new site’s list instead of pointing back to the original site’s list URL. I’ve tried “mylist”, “lists/mylist”, etc.–everything short of specifying subsite1/lists/mylist–but nothing has worked so far except for the full URL.

Is it possible to use a relative URL or some other method so that the connection string won’t have to be manually changed in the report every time I create a new site based on this site template?

Edit: I misunderstood what needed to go in the data source’s connection string. It’s not the URL to the list but rather the URL to the site that goes in the connection string. The concept of the question remains valid though–need to dynamically set the connection string of a data source that points to a SharePoint list.

Answer 1

After brainstorming with some co-workers we figured it out. The key is to use an expression for the connection string. Using my original example the goal is to get this:

http://mainsite/subsite1/

… in the connection string but without hardcoding it–make it dynamic based on where the report lives so the report can be packaged along with the rest of the site as a site template. The expression I ended up with is:

=Replace(Globals!ReportFolder, "Reports", "")

The report lives in a library called “Reports”, so Globals!ReportFolder returns:

http://mainsite/subsite1/Reports

The Replace() function then takes out the “Reports” part of the string, and the result is the connection string I wanted.

Things to look out for:

• You can’t test the expression while you’re building the report. I had to hardcode the site URL into the connection string so the designer could populate the list of lists when creating a dataset based on that data source. Otherwise it doesn’t show the available lists and you have to manually type everything. After designing the report I changed the connection string to the expression, and when deployed it worked.
• When testing make sure to refresh your browser view instead of the little refresh icon in the report’s task bar. Seems like the report’s built-in refresh only grabs new data but uses the rdl file it already has on hand, whereas refreshing the browser forces it to get the latest copy of the rdl as well as latest data. That’s probably self-explanatory, but it caused me some confusion for a few minutes when it didn’t look like my design changes made any difference, so hopefully this will help others not go through the same confusion.