Publish-AXReport Gives Error "Name cannot begin with the ' ' character"

Question

Running the below PowerShell script (i.e. to deploy all SSRS reports for AX) gives an error:

$axdllname = "Microsoft.Dynamics.AX.Framework.Management.dll"
$gacfolder = join-path $env:windir "assembly\GAC_MSIL"
$axdll = Get-ChildItem $gacfolder -Recurse -Name $axdllname
$axdll = join-path $gacfolder $axdll
import-module $axdll
Publish-AXReport -ReportName "*" -RestartReportServer

The error message is:

Publish-AXReport : Name cannot begin with the ' ' character, hexadecimal value 0x20. Line 46, position 8.
At line:1 char:17
+ Publish-AXReport <<<<  -ReportName "*" -RestartReportServer
+ CategoryInfo          : ParserError: (:) [Publish-AXReport], XmlException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : Name cannot begin with the ' ' character, hexadecimal value 0x20. Line 46, position 8.,M
icrosoft.Dynamics.AX.Framework.Management.Reports.PublishReportCommand

Sadly I can't find a copy of the source for Publish-AXReport, so can't dig deeper into where this exception's coming from.

Question

Does anyone know of a likely cause for this issue, or what steps I could take to uncover the cause?

Update

Instead of running for all reports using * I tried getting a list of all reports (works fine on its own / shows no reports with names beginning with a space) then piping this to the publish-axreport cmdlet; which now means I can see which report(s) produce that error.

Get-AxReport -ReportName * | Publish-AXReport

It's now clear that there are several reports (though only a small subset of those available) which throw this error when published. One of these is AssetAcquisitionDocumentPL.

The errors seem to occur only for reports with associated assemblies / always erring for those with; never for those without.

Same issue occurs if running Get-AXReportServerConfiguration | %{Publish-AXAssembly -id $_.ConfigurationId -vsprojectname 'assetAcquisitionDocumentPL.BusinessLogic'}

Running the above with the -verbose switch shows the error occurs at some point after the assumblies are copied form the temp directory to the SSRS bin directory.

Looks similar; though probably unrelated: http://forum.stimulsoft.com/viewtopic.php?&t=3661 — JohnLBevan, Dec 08 '15 at 18:49
Logged here: https://community.dynamics.com/ax/f/33/t/190841 — JohnLBevan, Feb 19 '16 at 21:27

bentek · Answer 1 · 2015-12-07T13:42:32.807

0

Looks like you have whitespaces (Hexidecimal 0x20) in the report name which is causing the error. Please check your script and/or report names to remove the whitespaces.

Line 46, position 8

edited Dec 07 '15 at 13:42

answered Dec 02 '15 at 23:45

bentek

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Thanks; though that line comes from the `AxDeployReports.ps1` script provided by Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.aspx?id=26571 – JohnLBevan Dec 03 '15 at 00:15
See edited answer. – bentek Dec 07 '15 at 13:42

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 19 '16 at 23:15

Issue resolved in this thread: https://community.dynamics.com/ax/f/33/t/190841

Root Cause

File D:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSRS11.AX2012_ENVIRON1\Reporting Services\ReportServer\rssrvpolicy.config contained a space between an open bracket and one of the element names; i.e. < CodeGroup ...> instead of <CodeGroup ...>.

Correcting this typo resolved the issue.

(I don't know how the space got into the file in the first place / doubt I'll find out unless we see this issue again).

Steps to Discover Cause

Should anyone have a similar issue with a different cause, here's a verbose version of how we uncovered the issue:

Download & extract process monitor: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/processmonitor.aspx
Close all unrequired processes / services (to reduce noise)
Open Microsoft Dynamics AX 2012 Management Shell as administrator
Type the command which generates the error (Publish-AXAssembly -id 'SSRSNLBAOS2' -vsprojectname 'assetAcquisitionDocumentPL.BusinessLogic' -verbose); select a command which does the least possible work before giving the error (to reduce noise).
Open Process Monitor
Run the command
The moment the error shows, hit Save in process monitor to save the session to a PML file.
Close process monitor and powershell
Open the PML file and filter on process name powershell.exe
Look for interesting events. For me I suspected an XML file, so looked at the file access events near the end of the file.
Since I'd seen similar issues with XML files before, focussed on the XML (format) files / tried to parse them to see which erred ([xml][string](get-content 'd:\some\path\to\a\file.config')).
When a file didn't parse / gave an error about an invalid space character, that was the culprit file.
I then opened the file in a text editor and thanks to syntax highlighting spotted the error immediately.
Correcting the file, saving, then confirming that was the only error in the file by parsing again left the file in a good state.
I then reran the Publish-AXAssembly ... command (without process monitor running) to see if the issue was resolved - it was.

Thanks to @BrandonWiese of the Dynamics Community for his assistance.

Publish-AXReport Gives Error "Name cannot begin with the ' ' character"

2 Answers2