Requirements for a Reporting Solution

Some of the requirements that a reporting solution must meet are:

  • Provide information to users for long-term consumption

  • Allow for hard-copy versions of the information

  • Allow for summary, analysis, and historical data

  • Provide a simple user interface for building complex layouts, including nesting, running totals, and conditional formatting

  • Provide for distribution of reports by e-mail, mobile devices, and other electronic media

  • Provide for scheduling of report creation

  • Provide a means for administering the reporting system

  • Allow for extensions of built-in capabilities

The following sections detail these features in Reporting Services.

Creating Reports

Just as Excel or Word require a file format (.xls or .doc) ...

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