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Why No Full SQL Server Reporting/Integration Services in Visual Studio 2022?
Visual Studio 2022 has been out for some eight months now, but it still lacks full support for SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), a top feature request.
In fact, that feature request, made by Microsoft employee Andy Sterland in November 2021 (when VS 2022 debuted), is the top "On Roadmap" item on the Developer Community feedback/feature request site, with 501 votes and 149 comments at the time of this writing.
[Click on image for larger view.] Developer Community "On Roadmap" Feature Request (source: Microsoft).
It reads: "The SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) features are not part of the initial release of Visual Studio 2022. The team is aware of the issue and are working to provide a solution in an upcoming update as soon as possible."
The team worked on the issue, which generated comments like "Absolutely nuts that this very popular functionality isn't available on day one" and dozens of similar complaints.
One comment last month read: "It has been more than 6 months and still Microsoft couldn't provide a solution for reporting services in VS 2022. All people got so far is a plugin that caused lots of crash reports in VS 2022 😦 We could live with the extra slowness of VS 2022 but this SSRS support missing is a real show stopper. Back to 2019."
Last Thursday, not too long after that comment, Microsoft marked the issue "Completed - Release" and pointed to the Microsoft Reporting Services Projects 2022 extension in the Visual Studio Marketplace.
[Click on image for larger view.] Microsoft Reporting Services Projects 2022 (source: Microsoft).
Its description reads: "The Microsoft RDL report designer, projects and wizards for creating professional reports. This package provides support for the .rptproj type and is designed for the most recent versions of Microsoft Reporting Services. This included the Report Designer authoring environment, where you can open, modify, preview, save, and deploy Reporting Services paginated report definitions, shared data sources, shared datasets, and report parts."
However, several developers quickly noted that the original feature request was for both SSRS and SSIS, so Microsoft put it right back to "On Roadmap" status, saying "Reopening this ticket to account for the SSIS extension which still needs to be migrated to VS 2022. Sorry for the confusion."
[Click on image for larger view.] SQL Server Integration Services Projects (source: Microsoft).
Indeed, the SQL Server Integration Services Projects extension in the marketplace (1.3 million installs) has a Q&A in which a developer last week asked "Where is the version for VS 2022?" to which Microsoft replied, "VS 2022 support is one major item that we are working on, current outlook is before end of this year. Thank you!"
Other developers complained that the SSRS extension that is ready for VS 2022 crashes and is "fiercely unstable." That tool has been installed more than 38,000 times and earned an average 2.7 rating from 16 reviewers.
Just today (July 18), a comment was posted on the Developer Community issue asking: "When do you expect this issue to be resolved? We are nearly 8 month into the year without any stable resolution, or is the resolution to use VS2019?"
Another developer replied: "I have install 'Microsoft RDLC Designer' and 'Microsoft Reporting Service Project' in VS2022 with menu Extensions -> Manage Extensions and works fine." That comment has received one downvote.
So that's why there still isn't full support for SSIS and SSRS in Visual Studio 2022.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.