Support Tip: Running certain reports in the Configuration Manager console causes the console to crash

~ Eric Ellis

Hi everyone, Eric Ellis here with a quick support tip for you about how a bad report in System Center Configuration Manager 2007 can potentially cause the admin console to crash.

The last time I ran into this, the customer was using ConfigMgr 2007 R3 in their environment, and when they would run the "Compliance 1 - Overall Compliance" report in the ConfigMgr console it caused the console to crash. The same behavior didn’t happen with any of the other reports, nor did it occur when running the same report via the SQL Server Reporting Services URL.

The details of the console crash included the following:

An error occurred in ConfigMgr. The ConfigMgr console will continue to function, however you should save your work and restart the console. After restarting the console, verify that your last configurations have been applied.

A related SMSAdminUI.log contained the following entry:

The report definition is not valid or supported by this version of Reporting Services. This could be the result of publishing a report definition of a later version of Reporting Services, or that the report definition contains XML that is not well-formed or the XML is not valid based on the Report Definition schema. Details: The element 'TablixMembers' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2010/01/reportdefinition' has incomplete content. List of possible elements expected: 'TablixMember' in namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2010/01/reportdefinition'.

What we ultimately discovered was that the default report had been edited in a later version of SSRS Report Builder than is supported by ConfigMgr 2007. This introduced schema differences to the RDL file, thus causing the console to crash.

The Configuration Manager product team touches on this issue here:

FAQ - SQL Reporting Services Integration with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2

The article linked above states the following:

“Partial support for authoring and running reports in a SQL Server 2008 environment
- The Configuration Manager 2007 R2 release uses the SQL Reporting Services 2005 report schema underneath and hence reports authored using Business Development Studio 2008 (as bundled with SQL Server 2008) and Report Builder 2.0 will not run from the Configuration Manager 2007 R2 administration console. However you can author reports using any of the tools available with SQL Reporting Services 2008 and can run these reports from the SQL Reporting Services Web UI directly.”

If you’re unsure whether this is your issue, you can easily tell by looking at the RDL file itself. For example, here’s the relevant snippet from a correct, working RDL file:

<?xml version="1.0"?><Report Name="Compliance 1 - Overall Compliance" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2005/01/reportdefinition">

Here’s an example of one edited using a later version:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><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">

So with this in mind, that gives us three possible ways to go forward:

Option 1: View the reports in question via the SQL Server Reporting Services Report Manager.

Option 2: Replace the modified copy of the report in question using the following steps:

a. Obtain an unmodified/default copy of the report file (*.RDL).

b. Open SSRS Report Manager and navigate to the location of the report.

c. Make a copy of the report by clicking the pull down menu associated to this report, clicking on the “Download” option, and saving the copy to a desired location, as shown below.

d. Overwrite the existing copy of the report in SSRS Report Manager:

- Open SSRS Report Manager and navigate to the location of the report.
- Click on the pull down menu associated with the report and click on the “Manage” option.
- In the report Properties window, click the “Replace” button.

- Click the Browse button, navigate to the location of the unmodified/default copy of the report file, click OK, and Apply.

- Click the “Home” link to return to the home page of the Report Manager.
- Browse to the location of the report in the Report Manager, run the report, and ensure that it functions properly.
- If running the report in Report Manager is successful, run the report from within the ConfigMgr 2007 console to ensure that the report is rendered without crashing.

Option 3: If the edits made to the report are required, and you need to be able to open the modified reports in the ConfigMgr 2007 console, modifications to the report must be done within the SSRS 2005 edition of Report Builder. Once this has been done, upload the SSRS 2005 version of the report into the SSRS 2008R2 Report Manager and override the previous version of the report using steps similar to those in Option 2 above.

Eric Ellis| Senior Support Escalation Engineer | Microsoft GBS Management and Security Division

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