Down-Convert an SSRS 2008 R2 RDL to SSRS 2008

December 17, 2012 by Ben Galluzzo    SSRS |    Comments (3)

Recently a team member brought up a problem in regards to obtaining a fairly sizeable 2008 R2 SSRS report which needed some modifications and to be deployed to a 2008 SSRS system; essentially requiring that the report RDL be down-converted to 2008 SSRS.  Unfortunately, installing BIDS for 2008 R2 on this team member's development environment is not an option so there needs to be another way to provide for a 2008 version of this particular RDL for which to be modified.  Could BIDS 2008 R2 on another developer workstation or a conversion utility provide the solution?  Possibly.  However, taking a look at the XML of the RDL, it's clear that the solution might be a bit simpler.  

This solution should be able to be applied when converting from 2012 back to 2008 as well.  Additionally, this may not be the most optimum method to update the RDL, however it was easy and quickly got a report out to production.  One other detail to note is that this report allows for the ability to provide names to be assigned to each worksheet when it is exported to an Excel worksheet.  

There are only two main steps to provide for this down-conversion:

  1. Apply proper schema
  2. Remove unsupported elements

Step 1 - Apply Proper Schema

To apply the older definition information, simply replace the newer RDL schema definition with the older version RDL schema.  Find the SSRS 2008 R2 <Report> element:

<Report 
    xmlns:rd="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQLServer/reporting/reportdesigner"
    xmlns:cl="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2010/01/componentdefinition"
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2010/01/reportdefinition"
>

 

Replace this <Report> element namespace information with the 2008 namespace information:

<Report
    xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2008/01/reportdefinition"
    xmlns:rd="http://schemas.microsoft.com/SQLServer/reporting/reportdesigner"
>

 

Step 2 - Remove Unsupported Elements

Remove incompatible start and end XML element tags.  Look for and remove the following start and end elements if they exist; being sure to leave the data within the elements:

<ReportSections>
</ReportSections>

<ReportSection>
</ReportSection>

 

Look for and remove, if they exist, the following start and end elements as well as the data within the elements:

<PageName>...</PageName>
<Authentication>integrated...</Authentication>
<rd:SecurityType>Integrated</rd:SecurityType>

 

Finally, test within BIDS for SSRS 2008.  That's pretty much all there is to it.  One additional note, it's possible that there may be other properties within an SSRS 2008 R2 RDL that will balk in BIDS for SSRS 2008.  Please feel free to share comments on any additional pieces of the RDL that may need to be removed or modified for a proper down-conversion.


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