Adding and removing Custom Reports in SQL Server Management Studio

SQL Server 2005 SP2 contains quite a few interesting new features. A few months ago I blogged about my old time feature requests: logon triggers. Another nice feature in SP2 are the Custom Reports in SQL Server Management Studio which allow you to add your own Reporting Services reports to the Management Studio.

Just right click anywhere in the Object Explorer, Choose Custom Reports and point to your favourite .RDL file. From now on this report will be just a mouse click away.


So, adding reports is easy, but how about removing them? All data about custom reports is stored in the a file called reports.xml which resides well hidden in your profile folder (%userprofile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\reports.xml).

If you want to remove a report from the Context menu follow these steps:

• Close all running SQL Server Management Studios
• Open %UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Tools\Shell\reports.xml
• Remove the corresponding section from the XML
• Save reports.xml
• Restart SQL Server Management Studio
• The report should be gone

By default the Management Studio gives a warning message when you start a custom report. You can suppress these warnings via the GUI. However if want to unsuppress these warnings you need to edit the same reports.xml file. Check out : "How to: Unsuppress Run Custom Report Warnings" from Books Online.

One more note: Microsoft recently released a set of reports called "SQL Server 2005 Performance Dashboard Reports". They are pretty cool and can be download here.