I must be desperate I'm on page 5 of google results

Got hired as an SSRS engineer. Walked into work day 1 thinking I was a bad ass with my SQL joes2pros knowledge and quickly (and i mean quickly) got smacked down with what real SQL procs look like........should've renamed my title to SSRS reverse-engineer. Good times.

Management: "You are the DBA and BI head right?"
Me: "yes..."
Management: "Awesome, so that means you can develop a quick software for me to use? It's really easy!"
Me: "Awesome, here are two options since its easy, you go make it yourself or..."
Management: "Is that sarcasm?"
Me: "...or you can ask the accountant to make it"
IT Director: "you deserved that bob."

Follow up on a previous rant:

I visited a customer to talk about the reporting discrepancy between two applications.

It turns out the applications were custom built by outsourced developers from Russia, that communicate with each other through a byzantine (and completely undocumented) series of web services, excel import/export tasks, and a customized SSRS environment.

These are spread across at least half a dozen servers, some on-premise and some cloud based, there are at least 3 SQL servers (2 running 2005, one running 2000), a 10 year old local install of TFS (which no one knows a username/password for), and who-knows-what-else.

They laid off their entire IT team years ago, and they have no backups.

I'm not certain anyone there even understands what the software is supposed to be doing beyond the most general terms.

No one knows if they even have source code.

Biggest case of "nope!" I've encountered in more than 20 years of IT experience.

I've a question. Has anyone in here ever be forced to use something as remotely frustrating as SQL Server Reporting Services (ssrs)? I swear it is one of the most convoluted piece of shit ever.

I never want to do another SSRS report ever again... It’s mind numbing and tedious and crashes visual studio more than it builds. And yet, there are always more to do. Always... I swear I’m going to drown in all the paper. Queries aren’t bad but seriously, can’t go an hour without something crashing itself.

Updated today:
VS 2017 15.3
dotNet Core 2.0
SSDT 17.2 (I think)
SSAS VS 2017 Package
SSRS VS 2017 Package
> Where the hell is the SSIS VS 2017 Package ???
VS Code 32bit
> Found 64bit is out, manually uninstalled 32bit, installed 64bit

Also wrote seed data for my program so I can continue development.

Budding Developer here...

I've tried to teach myself Web Dev over the past 10 yrs on/off... Sad. But now I'm actually in a developer role moved up from IT helpdesk a year ago.

In the past year I've learned SQL, SSRS, SSIS, database concepts, and.... VB6. I am a master at none due to having to cram so much in a year while taking on various projects, issues, and learning the organizations software infrastructure and processes. I also taught myself current HTML, CSS, and basic Javascript. Learning the different basic concepts with each.

Over the past couple months I've been given a new project and now learning ASP.NET and C#. Actually trying really hard to get adept at these as I'm finally doing Web Developing in my role...

I am also dealing with multiple major family issues and a near 2 yr old that we cosleep with that still doesn't sleep through the night.

Why the crap is it so easy to convert an enum to a string but takes 50 functions to convert a string to an enum???
Cast, convert, parse... Why so much logic???
When the online teacher says type why do I have to rifle through 7 different meanings in my head before I know what kind of type he's referring to??

Sent a CV for a full-stack C# role. The CV is mainly a mix of working in ASMX/WCF, SQL, SSRS, SSIS, Distributed transaction architectures then with about 40% ASP.NET focusing on server side but also with some client side technologies and that I sometimes use Illustrator for creating/manipulating SVGs.
Was told I am too "front-end"

!rant

"This vendor system is broken and we need the data in its DB. Here's a report used to use from it. Build a new report in SSRS that we can use to pull out all the records."

+1 day tearing apart their data warehouse to find where things are.
+1 day duplicating their sample report

"Well, you did a good job duplicating what we had, but we want something that will pull every single bit of possibly related information that's in the system, and not just what was on the report we gave you."

ffs!

Virus scan is crippling my computer, can't deploy till it's done! Might as well be using ticker tape to deploy these reports to the server.

I tried to make some SP using the syntax and formatting that visual studio outputs when making a SSRS report. I thought it was nice.

It formats the code in a standard way and transforms stuff like "join" to "INNER JOIN" and "left join" to "LEFT OUTER JOIN ".

When the team reviewed the code they were like WTF?! This syntax is horrible, it can't be understood. You did this?

*Me with my red face*...

I just said. You know what? I am going to go back to the old school syntax if you prefer. I just thought it was better.

Yeah... You really should go back to old school syntax.

---

Keep in mind that the old school syntax is annoying to me... No formatting at all and basic instructions are not in larger upper case.

Anyway, I thought it was nice tbh. I still think it is. And it is definitely better to me in some way.

What bothers me most is that they want to improve their coding. They say they want to be more standard and it seems every time you want to make a change it's not a good idea because "everything is already written that way". And when you don't make a change, "you should have change it"... Well sorry I was just copying the old style.

Anyways , it's not that important. I do get their point. Sometimes.

Fuck SSRS!
Fuck rsweb:ReportViewer!
Fuck MS Report Builder!
Fuck the people on the internet that made this all seem like it was feasible and easy!

Ugh, fuck the SSRS web service. Spent all week trying to consume the service with PowerShell, doesn't make it any easier when there are undocumented behaviours. TypeName property has to be Type, for instance, when creating a search condition, TOTALLY contrary to the documentation.

Want to change the data source for a report you uploaded? Gl;hf! Back to it next week, think I'm close to having a working deployment script...so close.

What problems are SSRs supposed to solve?

Grrrrrrr!!!!!!! How you frustrate me SQL SERVER REPORTING SERVICES! Designing a report changed query on dataset to include new field, fields started displaying all sorts of random stuff, booleans in text fields etc. Just spent 20 mins "checking" by rebuilding the first few bits of report and first dataset it's something weird with SSRS. Bye bye Sunday evening!!!