Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible

Report Authoring Environments

Standard Reports can be created and edited by your choice of two tools: Visual Studio's Report Designer or Report Builder. For instant ad hoc reporting, there is the exciting new Power View option, which renders inside a browser based on the Business Intelligence Semantic Model (BISM).

This chapter mainly covers the two modes of editing standard reports (RDLs), Report Designer inside Visual Studio and Report Builder. Chapter 59, “Creating and Deploying Power View Reports,” covers that topic at length.

Throughout this chapter, data from the AdventureWorksDW sample relational database and the Adventure Works DW Analysis Services sample database are used to create sample reports. You can download copies of these databases from www.codeplex.com.

The Report Designer in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT)

The Report Designer is the Visual Studio report authoring environment. It is launched when a reporting project is created inside SQL Server Data Tools or Visual Studio 2010. It provides the objects and controls necessary to create multiple reports and their data sources and sets. The advantage of using Report Designer is integration with source control such as Team Foundation Server and the ability to view source code. Report Designer also allows the developer to group similar reports into projects.

Report Builder

Released with SQL Server 2008 R2, this third iteration of Report Builder has matured dramatically since its first incarnation. You can access Report ...