SQL Server Reporting Services
SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based report generation system from Microsoft . It can be used to prepare and productively generate various types of interactive or pre-built reports. Administration takes place via a web interface . Reporting Services offers a web service- based interface that supports the development of your own reporting applications.
SSRS competes with Crystal Reports and other business intelligence tools; it is included as an installation option in the Express, Workgroup, Standard, and Enterprise editions of Microsoft SQL Server . The first version appeared in 2004 as an add-on to SQL Server 2000.
In SSRS reports in the are Report Definition Language (RDL), an XML - markup language defined. Reports can be designed with newer versions of Microsoft Visual Studio by installing the Business Intelligence Projects plug-in ; a simplified option that does not offer the full functionality of Visual Studio is the report builder supplied with the product. Based on the RDL texts, reports can be generated in a number of formats including Excel , PDF , CSV , XML, TIFF and other image formats, as well as an HTML web archive. SQL Server 2008 also supports the Microsoft Word (DOC) format. Other output formats are offered by third-party report generators.
Users can work directly with the Report Server web service or use the Report Manager instead, a web application that in turn communicates with the Report Server. With Report Manager, users can view and subscribe to reports and manage reports, data sources, and security settings. Reports can be sent via e-mail or placed in a file system via shared folders. The security is role-based and can at the level of individual objects (report, data source), folders such objects, or be defined globally for all objects. The roles can be inherited and overloaded .
Reports can be generated regularly with “Subscriptions”. A special feature are the data-controlled subscriptions, which allow the number of reports to be generated to be taken dynamically with their parameters from the database itself. (In this way you could, for example, realize the task: Generate a report for each customer who ordered something in the previous month and send this report to the person responsible for this customer ).
In addition to the independent mode written here, the Report Server can alternatively be operated in the SharePoint-integrated mode. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Server takes over the administration of the reports and the visualization within the Sharepoint portal.
In addition to the autonomous report server, which is part of the SQL server delivery, RDL reports can also be viewed with ReportViewer via the web or via Windows Forms . This allows reports to be embedded directly in websites or .NET applications. ReportViewer can process reports either via the server or locally.
Ad-hoc reports are supported from version 2005: The developer designs a report scheme and installs it on the reporting server, where the user can select relevant fields or data elements and thus generate reports. Users can download the resulting reports locally.
See also
Remarks
- ↑ including Visual Studio.NET 2003 and Visual Studio 2005
- ↑ MSDN Library: Reporting Services Render Method - See Device Information Settings
- ↑ Image Device Information Settings - SSRS can generate BMP , EMF , GIF , JPEG , PNG , and TIFF .