Manage Snapshot History
As we mentioned in our earlier overview
of Snapshot caching, we can use settings on the History tab
to manage the population of the History table with reports at the
scheduled Snapshot times – primarily to support comparisons between the Snapshots
over time. As we also noted, we can conveniently view, or even remove, the
various stored Snapshot instances via the History tab at any
time, as well. Let’s take a look at the steps involved in configuring Snapshots
from the perspective of report history.
1.
Click the History
tab within the left margin of the Execution page, as shown in Illustration
10.
Illustration
10: Moving to the History Settings from the Execution Page ...
On the History
page, we are greeted with an initial pair of options for adding Snapshots
to report history. We can check the box labeled Allow
history to be created manually – which
will allow us to navigate to the report involved from the Report Manager
at any time, and create a new Snapshot manually, simply by clicking a
button that appears after clicking the History tab atop the report
viewer. We can simulate this action with the following simple steps:
2.
Place a check
in the box atop the History page, labeled Allow
history to be created manually, as
depicted in Illustration 11.
Illustration
11: Configuring for Manual Snapshot Creation ...
3.
Click Apply
in the lower left corner of the page.
4.
Click the View
tab in the upper left corner of the page.
5.
Click the History
tab atop the upper left corner of the report body, as shown in Illustration
12.
Illustration
12: Click the History Tab atop the Report ...
6.
On the History
page, click the New Snapshot button (as depicted
in Illustration 13) in the upper left corner, to use the newly
enabled option to manually generate a Snapshot report.
Illustration
13: Click the New Snapshot Button to Manually Generate a Snapshot
The History Log is enabled, and presents an entry
for the Snapshot we have created.
7.
Click the New
Snapshot button two more times.
The three Snapshots we have generated, along with their
respective execution times and size details, appear in the History Log (where
we can view any of them simply by clicking the linked “When Run” information
for the chosen Snapshot), as shown in Illustration 14.
Illustration
14: The Manually Generated Snapshots Appear in the History Log
The History
Log, which also allows us to delete Snapshots manually, works the
same if the Snapshots are added manually or automatically. We can
provide for the automatic addition of Snapshots to the report
history by taking the following steps:
8.
Click the Properties
tab atop the History page to return to the Properties page for
the report.
9.
Click the History
tab, once again, in the left pane of the Properties page.
From the Properties – History page, with the
appropriate selections, we can:
-
Automatically
store all report execution Snapshots in history
-
Automatically add
Snapshots to report history based upon a schedule:
-
Selecting a report-specific
schedule (by filling in the schedule details, and selecting the start and end
dates for the schedule, as we saw earlier), or
-
Selecting a shared
schedule (by selecting a pre-existing schedule, as available, from the
list).
We can
also make settings to allow unlimited Snapshots in report history, as
well as to limit their number to a preset quantity, in the lower section of the
Properties page.
Our options
on the Properties page appear as depicted in Illustration 15.
Illustration
15: Options for Adding Snapshots to History
10.
Be sure to
turn off Snapshot generation as appropriate within the local
environment, when ready.
11.
Exit Report
Manager when finished...
Conclusion
In this
article, we continued our subseries surrounding caching options in Reporting
Services 2005. We began by naming the three types of caching
that Reporting Services 2005 offers, referencing the articles
within which we explore each. We then began our examination of the last of
these three, Snapshot caching.
As a part
of our examination of Snapshot caching, we reviewed the general purpose
of this third caching option. We next reviewed details about how Snapshot
caching is accomplished in Reporting Services 2005. Finally we
explored the settings involved in putting Snapshot caching to work
within the Report Manager interface (having noted that we address
similar settings from a SQL Server Management Studio perspective in the
second half of this article, Snapshot Reports II: Report Manager Perspective), including system defaults for those settings.
Throughout the various sections of the article, we discussed other information
about Snapshot caching in an attempt to assist in selecting or discarding
this option for use within our own business environments.
»
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