Hi Everyone,
I am a developer who has been working with SSRS for about three years now. Most of my work is provided through ReportsManager or embedded in desktop applications using a ReportViewer control. I have been working with AX 2012 reports pretty heavily for about six months now and I keep running into problems. I have voiced my issues internally, but the looks I get lead me to believe that others think that I am just making excuses. If it is possible I need to see if I can troubleshoot these issues on my own. Otherwise, I am just going to have to deal with an unstable development environment.
Kernel version: 6.2.1000.6189
Application version: 6.2.1000.4051
When building/rebuilding a report project I randomly get one of these three results:
- Successful rebuild
- Error message
- Fatal exception and Visual Studio crash
I say the result is random because Visual Studio could crash, then I could rebuild without making changes and get an error, then I could rebuild again without changes and it would be successful. Or sometimes I could have a successful build and do it again and it will die.
Error message
The error message that shows up pretty frequently is this:
System.InvalidOperationException: Object is currently in use elsewhere.
and
Invoke validation method 'Validation' failed
Their appearance is random. They can appear and disappear in subsequent runs without making changes to the report definition.
Fatal crashes
This one is great. Occasionally when saving changes to the report design or rebuilding the project I will get a message that says "Microsoft Visual Studio has encountered a problem and needs to close." I have no idea what causes this, but my progress is almost never lost. Visual Studio resurrects itself and all of my recent additions are still there.
Validation
Prior to taking new datasources to reports I test them using jobs so that I can be sure that they are returning data and that they are returning the correct data. Typically, I create an instance of the dataprovider, an instance of the contract, and a table buffer of the same type that is named in the attribute of the getter function. I then roll through the table buffer using a while select and dump the contents into an infolog.
Visual Studio seems to act like it is setup properly. I can select the configuration that I want to target, open up Visual Studio, view the application explorer, and the AOT materializes with all of the customizations made to it so far.
Additional strange things
I cannot deploy reports from Visual Studio.
If I attempt it I get the following message. It is the same message regardless of whether I run Visual Studio in standard or as administrator.
An error occurred : The specified directory service attribute or value does not exist.
If User Account Control (UAC) is enabled on the machine, close the application, right-click the application, and then click Run as administrator.
The deployment was aborted. You do not have privileges to deploy to server: ********. For deployment, you must have administrative rights to the SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) server. Contact your administrator to deploy.
You should note that if I open a browser and navigate to the development environment SSRS folder settings that my <domain>/<username> is listed as have the following roles {Browser, Content Manager, DynamicsAXBrowser, My Reports, Publisher, Report Builder}.
Since I can't deploy from Visual Studio, in the 1/3 chance that a report actually builds I publish it by creating a RDP connection to the development environment, then I open up AX management shell, and publish the report using "Publish-AxReport -ReportName <reportname>".
Wrapping it up
- Am I the only who is experiencing symptoms like these? Please bump this thread if these things happen to you, too.
- Is there something from what I have posted here that might indicate the potential cause for the instability?
- What should I try next?
Roll the dice...
