Wednesday, July 16, 2014

An error occurred while loading the model for the item or data source 'EntityDataSource' on Powerview reports when site restored to different SharePoint 2013 farm

We are in the process to upgrade SharePoint 2013 to SP1 and June 2014 CU. We would like to refresh non-production farm with production content. We have identified some issues and one of the issues is we are getting error “An error occurred while loading the model for the item or data source 'EntityDataSource'” for all Powerview reports when site restored to different SharePoint 2013 farm.

Here is the procedure to reproduce the issue and the possible reason. We might need to work with Microsoft to identify a solution.
  1. Create a site collection named http://spsbx15/sites/Harry/ 
  2. Enable Powerview site feature and add an “PowerPivot Gallery” app
  3. Upload one Powerview file named “HelloWorldPicnicPowerViewRTM-2010.xslx” from Microsoft site
  4. Create a power report and same as “Report1” as in the following screenshot
  5. Backup the content DB as WSS_Content_Harry.bak
  6. Restore the content DB to different farm and change the permission for the system account
  7. Restore the site collection on destination farm using command “Mount-SPContentdatabase -name WSS_Content_Harry -Webapplication http://spsbx08
  8. The site will be restored to http://spsbx08/sites/Harry/
  9. Grant the access permission to the new content DB to the system account
    • $w = Get-SPWebApplication –Identity http://spsbx08
    • $w.GrantAccessToProcessIdentity("na\spsvc8")
  10. Click the “Report1” from the restored site and get the following error

Here is the site from original SharePoint farm.

We are able to view the Report1 from original site.


Since Powerview report will generate database entries in SSRS database as in the following screenshot,we believe the Powerview reports need to connect to SSRS database tables to display the report. As site backed up and restored to new SharePoint farm, there is no process provided by Microsoft to backup and restore the Powerview related SSRS tables along with site collection content. As a result, the restored Powerview reports will not work! I've a workaround to fix this and will publish in future blog. We are working with Microsoft to verify whether we could have a automate way to fix all Powerview reports for the whole farm.


The good news for the restored site is you can create new Powerview reports without issues.

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