Dynamics AX 2009: Creating a simple SSRS Report

Dynamics AX 2009 features support for writing reports using SQL Server Reporting Services. In this post, I’m going to show you how to create a simple SSRS report that accesses data in the AX database.

The overall process I will describe will focus on the first stage of authoring and deploying the report from the developers perspective.

In future posts I’ll cover

Formatting the report
Adding menu items to launch the report
Security
Accessing OLAP data
etc.

The basic steps

Create an AX Query
Create a new AX Reports Project and a new report in that project
Create a dataset in the report bound to that query
Create a design to report to render the dataset
Preview the design
Deploy the design to SSRS
View the report via IE
Save the Report project back into AX

The report I will create will be a simple unformatted table of customers and customer IDs.

Create an AX Query

Launch the Dynamics Client

Open the AOT

In the AOT, right click on Queries and select New Query

By default a new query will be create with a default name (in this case “Query1”)

Right-Click on that query and select Rename

Give it the name “DemoQueryCustomers” and hit RETURN

Expand that query in the AOT

Right-click on Data Sources and click New Data Source

A new data source will be created and by default attached to some table (in this case it will be called “Address_1”

If you hover over this datasource you will see the query string

Right click on that data source and select Properties

The property window for that data source will appear

Navigate to the Table property and change it to the “CustTable”

Click on the Name property

You’ll notice that the Name changes to “Cust_Table_1”

Close the property window

Click Save All in the AOT

Close the AOT

Create a new AX Reports Project and a new report in that project

Launch Visual Studio 2008

File > New > Project

The New Project dialog will launch

Under Project Types, select Visual C# / Dynamics

Under Templates select Dynamics AX Reporting Project

Change the Name to “DemoReportsLibrary1”

Click OK

An new AX Report Library project is created

By default it contains a report called “Report1”

Right click on this report and rename it to “DemoReportCustomers”

Create a dataset in the report that is bound to the AX query

In the report, right click on Datasets and select new Dataset

By default the name of the Dataset is “Dataset1".

Rename it to “DataSetCustomers”

In the properties window for the Dataset

Verify that the Data Source is “Dynamics AX”

Verify that the Data Source Type is “Query”

Verify that the Default Layout is “Table”

Click on the Query field

Click on the ellipsis button in the value for the Query field

A dialog will launch that will list all the queries in AX. It will take a few seconds to populate this dialog with all the queries so be patient.

Under Select Query, choose the query you previously created “DemoQueryCustomers”

After you select that query the right column will be filled with fields from the query.

By default All will be selected.

Uncheck All

Check the AccountNum field

Check the City field

Check the Name field

Check the State field

Click OK to close the dialog

You’ll now see that ”DataSetCustomers” contains all the fields you selected.

Select “DataSetCustomers” and drag it into the “Designs” node

After you finish dragging, you’ll see that a design has been created. It will be given the name “AutoDesign1”

Preview the design

With AutoDesign1 selected, click Preview in the toolbar

You’ll notice a message at the top of the preview saying “The design has validation warnings” and you can see the warnings in the error list at the bottom.

We’ll ignore this for now.

Click the Save icon to save the report

Deploy the design to SSRS

Right click on the solution and select Deploy