Create and Deliver Reports with SQL Server Reporting Services 2008

Abstract

Wouldn't it be great if you could create and deliver reports with the same ease that you create and deliver documents? With the latest version of SQL Server Reporting Services (2008), you can.

Everyone was included when Microsoft decided to hand out upgrades and feature improvements for the 2008 version. Administrators and users will love the improved methods of rendering very large reports, and designers will not believe how much easier it is to create and modify reports. If you work with report design or administration, this white paper will be especially beneficial for you. You will learn how you can use the new tools available to create and deploy reports. You will also discover the options available to you when delivering reports. If you are planning an upgrade from an earlier version of SSRS, this white paper can also help you to understand some of the new options and features to better plan your deployment.

Sample

Report Creation

There are three tools available for creating your reports: The Report Wizard, Report Builder, and Report Designer. They all will allow you to configure connections to a database, format reports, and deploy or save them. The options they give you in doing so are very different, however. We will discuss all three of them and compare their features so you can decide which one is best for you.

Report Wizard is the easiest of the three to use but provides the lowest level of functionality. You cannot modify existing reports with it, and you are limited to the template options in the Wizard itself or the ones you add to it. It can only be accessed through the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) tool. Through the wizard, you will provide information about your report layout and formatting. You will also be given the opportunity to provide a query and a shared or report specific data source. If your report is simple and requires no customizations outside of the provided templates, however, you are able to create and deploy a report in minutes.

Report Builder is intended for business users who do not have a lot of experience or skill creating or modifying reports. It makes the report-building process simple by using an uncomplicated interface and layout. Databases are accessed with the use of report models that give a "business view" of the table and column data. These models are much easier for users not familiar with database structure or design to work with. You will not have the extensive tool set and options available in a normal report design tool, but for business users that want a way to create and change reports quickly without having to learn a product that has more features than they will ever use, it works well.

For those that have used Report Builder in SQL Server 2005, they will like the new features, like the ability to work with multiple data regions in a single report, non-SQL Server data sources, and more query options. Is this the right tool for someone new to report design in SQL Server 2008, who wants an easy and quick way of creating reports? Maybe, but it might be better to actually try the full-featured Report Designer first. Because of the new design and features of the tool and its ease of use, Report Builder is considered by some to be obsolete and might not even show up in later versions of SQL Server. Report Builder still works well for those who are upgrading and want to keep working the way they have. Even for those users, there are many advantages, and practically no down-side, to switching to the new Report Designer.

Report Designer gives you all the options you would expect in a full-featured report design tool. It is intended for use by designers that need to create new reports or change existing ones. Older report formats can be automatically upgraded by opening them in the designer. You can access the tool by opening a report project in BIDS as was done in earlier versions. However, new in 2008 is the ability to open it directly and install it without using BIDS. This means you now have a report development tool from Microsoft that can be installed strictly for that purpose. You no longer have the two untenable options of installing a tool for report developers with more than they need (Report Designer and BIDS) or one with not enough features (Report Builder). You can even get the Report Designer with an install of SQL Server Express 2008.

One of the first things that strike you when you open Report Designer is how "Office-like" it looks. You can even use ribbons to access features you would normally use the menu and toolbars for. Even for users who need to create only simple reports, the easy interface makes it very easy to learn how to use. Some users who work regularly with Word or other Office products will be able to intuitively figure out a lot of the options in this tool. All of this without sacrificing any of the functionality designers expect this tool to have. There are even additional features that weren't available before. Let's walk through a simple report project from creation to deployment to see how this tool can work not only for administrators and designers, but also for regular business users.

We will walk through four steps in the configuration of our new report.We will setup the data source and dataset, choose a layout and format, customize, and then deploy.