Text-based Query Designer User Interface (Report Builder)

Use the text-based query designer to specify a query using the query language supported by the data source, run the query, and view the results at design time. You can specify multiple Transact-SQL statements, query or command syntax for custom data processing extensions, and queries that are specified as expressions. Because the text-based query designer does not preprocess the query and can accommodate any kind of query syntax, this is the default query designer tool for many data source types. 

Security Note
Users access data sources when they create and run queries. You should grant minimal permissions on the data sources, such as read-only permissions.

The text-based query designer displays a toolbar and the following two panes:

• **Query   **Shows the query text, table name, or stored procedure name depending on the query type. Not all query types are available for all data source types. For example, table name is supported only for the data source type OLE DB.

• **Result   **Shows the results of running the query at design time.

Text-based Query Designer Toolbar

The text-based query designer provides a single toolbar for all the command types. The following table lists each button on the toolbar and its function.

Button	Description
Edit As Text	Toggle between the text-based query designer and the graphical query designer. Not all data source types support graphical query designers.
Import	Import an existing query from a file or report. Only file types sql and rdl are supported
	Run the query and display the result set in the Result pane.
Command Type	Select Text, StoredProcedure, or TableDirect. If a stored procedure has parameters, the Define Query Parameters dialog box appears when you click Run on the toolbar, and you can fill in values as needed. Note If a stored procedure returns more than one result set, only the first result set is used to populate the dataset.

Command Type Text

When you create a SQL Server dataset, the relational query designer opens by default. To switch to the text-based query designer, click the Edit As Text toggle button on the toolbar. The text-based query designer presents two panes: the Query pane and the Result pane. The following figure labels each pane.

The following table describes the function of each pane.

Example

The following query returns the list of last names from the AdventureWorks2012 2008 database ContactType table for the Person schema.

SELECT Name FROM Person.ContactType

When you click Run on the toolbar, the command in the Query pane runs and the results are displayed in the Result pane. The resultset displays a list of 20 types of contacts, for example, Owner or Sales Agent.

Command Type StoredProcedure

When you select Command type StoredProcedure, the text-based query designer presents two panes: the Query pane and the Result pane. Enter the stored procedure name in the Query pane and click Run on the toolbar. If the stored procedures uses parameters, the Define Query Parameters dialog box opens. Enter the parameter values for the stored procedure. A report parameter is created for every stored procedure input parameter.

The following figure shows the Query and Results panes when you run a stored procedure. In this case, the input parameters are constants.

The following table describes the function of each pane.

Example

The following query calls the AdventureWorks2012 2008 stored procedure uspGetWhereUsedProductID. You must enter a value for the product identification number parameter when you run the query.

uspGetWhereUsedProductID

Click the Run (!) button. When prompted for the query parameters, use the following table to enter values.

For the specified date, the result set displays a list of 13 product identifiers that used the specified component number.

Command Type TableDirect

When you select Command type TableDirect, the text-based query designer presents two panes: the Query pane and the Result pane. When you enter a table and click the Run button, all the columns for that table are returned.

Example

For a data source type OLE DB, the following dataset query returns a result set for all contact types in the AdventureWorks2012 2008 database.

Person.ContactType

When you enter the table name Person.ContactType, it is the equivalent of creating the Transact-SQL statement SELECT * FROM Person.ContactType.

See Also

Concepts

Relational Query Designer User Interface (Report Builder)

Other Resources

Query Designers (Report Builder)