SQL Server Reporting Services

Following Topics will be covered in these

slides

1. Overview
2. Introduction
3. Post Configuration
4. BIDS
5. Expressions
6. Points to Note
Overview
 Business Intelligence is the process of analyzing and exploring
the information, trends and patterns hidden in data.
 BI escalates the business roadmap and facilitates business
users to deliver better strategic solutions. This process helps
enterprise decision makers by providing data models,
statistical analysis, forecasting for comprehensive data
analysis.
 SQL Server Reporting Services provides highly flexible,
scalable, customizable and high performance reporting
solution in a cost effective way.
 Reporting Services offer various delivery methods, from
ftp to email and it provides various rendering formats
therefore it makes adds easiness to business to business
reporting. Similarly because of its flexibility and
industry standard security model, it makes extranet and
secure internet reporting easily achievable.
Introduction
 SSRS includes all the development and management
pieces necessary to publish end user reports in
 HTML
 PDF
 Excel
 CSV
 SSRS 2008 gives us the additional feature for export in
MS-word format
The Reporting Services Architecture
Reporting Services has a quite complex architecture. It includes
 Development tools
 Administration tools
 Report viewers.
There are a number of ways to get to Reporting Services programmatically, including

SOAP and WMI interfaces.

 Report Server is the core engine that drives Reporting Services.
 Report Manager is a Web-based administrative interface for
Reporting Services.

 Decides when the reports will be scheduled to run

 Maintaining the user profiles on the report server.
 View or search certain reports.
 Site property configuration and folder management in the report server. 

 Report Designer is a developer tool for building complex reports.

 Report Builder is a simplified end-user tool for building reports.
 The Report Server database stores report definitions.
 Reports themselves can make use of data from many different
data sources.
Developers use two GUI tools for creating reports
 Report Designer
 Graphical tool hosted within the Microsoft Visual Studio IDE.
 Report Designer provides a tabbed windows for Data, Layout, and
Preview that allow you to design a report interactively. You can add
datasets to accommodate a new report design idea, or adjust report
layout based on preview results. Also, it provides query builders, an
Expression editor, and wizards to step you through the process of
creating a simple report.

 Report Builder
 Provides a simpler user interface for creating ad hoc reports, directed
primarily at business users rather than developers.
 Report Builder requires a developer or administrator to set up a data
model before end users can create reports.
Post Configuration
The SSRS installation will create two new IIS sites,
 Reports
 Report Server

The Reports physical directory is located at

C:\ Program Files \Microsoft SQL Server \MSSQL.3 \Reporting Services
\ReportManager.

The Report Servers directory can be found at

C:\ Program Files \Microsoft SQL Server \MSSQL.3 \Reporting Services \ReportServer.

 The Reports virtual directory contains the Report Manager Web application. You can
access using //your server name/Reports
 Viewing Reports
 Searching and browsing for specific reports
 Configuring report viewing security
 Creating schedules and subscriptions
 Launching Report Builder for ad hoc reports
 The other virtual directory, Report Server, is a web service for
requesting reports without going through the Report Manager GUI.
By passing arguments in the http query string, reports and options
can be requested. Browsing without any arguments should
generate the web page shown below.
BIDS
 Actual report creation is done in a drag and drop application called
Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS). BIDS is located
in the Windows program group "Microsoft SQL Server 2005," "SQL
Server Business Intelligence Development Studio." The Business
Intelligence Development Studio allows for easy creation of data
sources and report formatting.
 SQL Server Reporting Services can be used to create end user
reports in several different formats including HTML, PDF, and Excel.
BIDS contd..
 The SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio is a Visual Studio tool for
creating reports. Reports created on your local machine using BIDS can be deployed
to any Reporting Server.
BIDS contd..
 There are two ways to create SSRS Reports. You can build the report manually, or
you can use the Report Wizard to give yourself a head start.
 For this first report, we are going to take advantage of the wizard. Start a new
Business Intelligence project in Visual Studio 2005.
 From the menu, select Project > Add New Item. Select the Report Wizard option
and call the file "FirstReportWZ.rdl". Click Add. Click Next on the Welcome screen
and this will bring you to the Select the Data Source screen:
Report Server Project Wizard
Create a Reports Project
Add report to solution
Layout Tab – Drag and drop report items and design report format
Expression
Expression Examples in Reporting Services
  Functions - Use Visual Basic functions to provide date
Date
information in your report.
The following expression contains the Today function,
which provides the current date.

=Today()

The DateAdd function is useful for supplying a range of

dates based on a single parameter.

=DateAdd(DateInterval.Month, 6, Parameters!
StartDate.Value)

The following expression contains the Year function,

which displays the year for a particular date.

=Year(Fields!OrderDate.Value)
String Functions

You can use Visual Basic functions to manipulate strings in

your report.
You can combine more than one field by using concatenation
operators and Visual Basic constants. The following
expression returns two fields, each on a separate line in the
same text box.

=Fields!FirstName.Value & vbCrLf & Fields!LastName.Value

You can format dates and numbers in a string with the Format
function. The following expression displays values of
the StartDate and EndDate parameters in long date format.
 

=Format(Parameters!StartDate.Value, "D") & " through " & 

Format(Parameters!EndDate.Value, "D") 

=Right(Parameters!User.Value, Len(Parameters!User.Value) -
InStr(Parameters!User.Value, "\"))
Conversion Functions

You can use Visual Basic functions to convert

data types as needed in your report.

=CStr(Parameters!MySelection.Count)
@Parameters
 After the user selects a set of values, the report
processing engine constructs the correct SQL.
The author can also specify a set of default
values for the parameter. Developers can
programmatically pass multiple parameter sets
via URL Access or the Web Services API.
Points to note
 Analyze the needs of the users so you know what fields they are
going to need in their reports. 
 Providing too little information renders the reporting service
useless, but providing too much information could eventually
cause performance issues as more users access reports.
 Ensure you have the appropriate referential integrity in place. 
Having a series of reports running on a poorly normalized database
or poorly designed Analysis Services cube will cause additional
headaches.