Reporting Frequently Asked Questions


Q. I have many custom Web reports. Will they work in SMS 2003?

A. SMS 2003 has a new reporting infrastructure. You will need to export the SQL query used in your Web reports and import it into SMS 2003 reporting.

Q. My report is configured to display report data as a chart. Why won't my chart display through Report Viewer? (Updated February 27, 2004)

A.

To display report data as a chart by using Report Viewer, you must have a licensed copy of Microsoft Office XP Web Components or Microsoft Office 2000 Web Components installed on the reporting point site system. The Office 2003 Office Web Components add-in is available on the Microsoft Download site.

For more information about creating and managing reports, see Chapter 11, “Creating Reports,” in the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

Q. When I run a prompted report, can I use wildcards in the Values field to reduce the number of results that the report generates?

A.

The number of values that might be returned when you click Values can be very large and is limited by default to 1,000. You can use wildcards to reduce the number of values that is displayed. Use the percent (%) symbol to substitute for any number of characters, the underscore (_) symbol to substitute for a single character, and the bracket ([ ]) symbols to search for literals. Although wildcards help reduce the number of values that is displayed when you click Values, you cannot use wildcards to reduce the number of results that is returned when you actually run a report by clicking Display. If you enter a wildcard and then click Display, the report searches for the wildcard as a literal value. For example, if you enter %m% when prompted for a computer name and then click Display, the report searches for computers that have the literal name %m%.

For more information about creating and managing reports, see Chapter 11, “Creating Reports,” in the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

Q. Why can’t a user access a report?

A.

For a user or a group to access one or more reporting point servers, that user or group must be a member of the SMS Reporting User group on the desired reporting point servers. Also, the user must have Read permission for the report.

For more information about creating and managing reports, Chapter 11, “Creating Reports” in the Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 Operations Guide.

Q. I try to view a report I know have rights to and get an HTTP error. What should I do? (Added January 21, 2004)

A.

HTTP errors can occur when the computer running Internet Explorer is configured to connect to the Internet through a proxy server. To fix the problem, configure Internet Explorer to bypass the proxy server when connecting to the local IP address of the reporting point.

For more information about configuring the connection settings in Internet Explorer, see article 135982 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.



Q. When my web reports contain a column that has more than 5000 records I get an IIS error 500 on my IIS 6.0 reporting point. How do I fix this? (Added January 21, 2004)

A.

You might need to adjust the AspBufferingLimit setting. The AspBufferingLimit property sets the maximum size of the ASP buffer. The default is approximately 4 MB. To change the default, open %WindowsRoot%\System32\InetSrv\MetaBase.xml and search for “AspBufferingLimit”. Adjust the setting to allow for 1 MB per 1000 records. You can make changes to the MetaBase.xml file while IIS is running only if the edit-while-running feature is enabled. Otherwise, you must stop IIS before editing the MetaBase.xml file.

For more information about writing changes to MetaBase.xml, see “Configuring the Metabase” in the Server Administration Guideon Microsoft TechNet.

Q. There seems to be a limitation on the Web Reporting tool of 10,000 records. Is there any way to increase that? (Updated May 31, 2006)

A.

You can change the limit by modifying the registry on the reporting point machine. Under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\SMS\Reporting key, add the DWORD value Rowcount and assign it the value for your desired maximum limit. The maximum row count in decimal is 32767. If you need to return more than 32,767 records, you can set the row count to 0xffffffff hexadecimal, which will return all rows. However, this significantly increases the workload on the SMS site database. If you experience problems displaying the values in reports, add the Values Rowcount registry key by using the same settings as above.

Be aware that if you increase this value, you might also need to adjust the AspBufferingLimit setting. For more information about changing the AspBufferingLimit setting, see the FAQ “When my Web reports contain a column that has more than 5,000 records I get an IIS error 500 on my IIS 6.0 reporting point. How do I fix this?” earlier in this document.

Q. I have trouble running queries on my SMS Administrator console running Windows XP SP2. What’s wrong? (Added August, 2004)

A. If you run the SMS Administrator console on a Windows XP SP2, queries will fail the first time they run. After failing to run the first time, the operating system displays a dialog box asking if you want to unblock statview.exe. If you unblock statview.exe, future queries will run without errors. You can also manually add statview.exe to the list of programs and services on the Exceptions tab of the Windows Firewall prior to running a query.

Q. How do I design a query that finds all clients without specific software installed? (Added May 31, 2006))

A.

How to find clients without specific software installed.

  1. In the SMS Administrator console, rightclick Collections node, Click New, and then Click Collection.
  2. On the General tab enter the name for the new collection (for example, “Clients without software XYZ”) and you can also type a descriptive comment.
  3. Click the Membership Rules tab, and then Click Query Rules (the database with the yellow star) to display the Query Rule Properties dialog box.
  4. Click the General tab, and then enter a name for the query (for example, “Query for clients without software XYZ”).
  5. Click Edit Query Statement to display the Query Statement Properties dialog box.
  6. Click Show Query Language to display the Query Language view of this dialog box.
  7. In the Query statement text box, paste the following text:


select sys.name from sms_r_system as sys where sys.name NOT in (select distinct
sys.name from sms_r_system as sys inner join sms_g_system_softwareproduct as
prod ON sys.ResourceID = prod.resourceid where prod.productname = "ProductName")


Q. I just installed WSUS on my reporting point and now I can't get any reports. Why? (Added May 31, 2005)

A.

Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) supports using only TCP ports 80, 8530, and 443. When you install the reporting point, it defaults to TCP port 80. If you want to install WSUS on the same computer as your reporting point, you must configure your reporting point to use a port not used by WSUS by completing the following steps:

  1. Uninstall the reporting point.
  2. Change the TCP port for IIS services.
  3. Reinstall the reporting point, and configure it to use the same port number as IIS services.

For more information about changing the TCP port for IIS services, see article 149605 in the Microsoft Knowledge Base. To change the port used for the reporting point, follow the procedure for enabling HTTPS access for reporting points but use the TCP port assigned to IIS services instead of port 443. For the procedure to enable HTTPS access for reporting points, see "Appendix E: SMS Security Procedures" in Scenarios and Procedures for Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003: Security on Microsoft TechNet.


For More Information

Did you find this information useful? Send your suggestions and comments about the FAQ to smsdocs@microsoft.com.

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