Creating System Center Advanced Reports - Microsoft System Center Reporting - page 366

How to do it...
In order to complete the recipe's final dashboard report, we will create two basic reports,
the first of which will display data from Service Manager and the second from Operations
Manager.
Creating the Open Incidents report
Chapter 7 , Creating Reports for System Center Service Manager and Orchestrator , dis-
cussed the ETL process that System Center Service Manager uses to transfer data from the
operational database to the Data Warehouse database. As a result of this ETL process, new
objects such as incidents or changes to the existing objects can take up to 1 hour before
they are available in the Service Manager Data Warehouse database. As we want the data
in the dashboard report to be real time, we need to access the Service Manager operational
database in our report.
Tip
Accessing the Service Manager operational database
Note that accessing the operational database is not supported by Microsoft. This is because
there is a possibility that the database schema might change between release cycles. Also,
in order to prevent locks from occurring when accessing the database (read only), it is re-
commended that you always use the NOLOCK query option. Avoid targeting this database
as it can lead to performance issues if the SQL server does not have adequate resources.
We first need to create a shared data source for the Service Manager Operational database.
Refer to the Creating reports using the operational database recipe in Chapter 7 , Creating
Reports for System Center Service Manager and Orchestrator , for instructions. You must
perform these steps using the SQL Server Reporting Service ( SSRS ) instance for Service
Manager. SSRS is deployed as part of the Data Warehouse setup for Service Manager.
Once you have created the shared data source, follow these instructions to create the Open
Incidents report:
1. Start Report Builder (using the Report Manager website or from a standalone in-
stallation).
2. Under New Report , select Blank Report .
3. Right-click on Data Sources and click on Add Data Source… .
4. Type ServiceManager in the Name: field .