Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, 2nd Edition

7.4. Under the Hood

In Chapter 1, we talked about the fact that the report definitions are stored using the Report Definition Language (RDL). RDL was created by Microsoft specifically for Reporting Services. Two things set this file structure apart from other Microsoft file structures, such as a Word document or an Excel spreadsheet. First, RDL is a published standard. Second, RDL is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) document.

Microsoft has gone public with the specifications for RDL. Third parties can create their own authoring environments for creating report definitions. If the RDL from these third-party tools conforms to the RDL standard, the reports created by these tools can be managed and distributed by Reporting Services.

Because RDL ...