Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005: Applied Techniques Step by Step

Design Considerations

Discussing proper report design planning is out of this book’s scope; however, it is worth mentioning that a plan should be put in place before starting to create reports. The reporting plan is used to identify and analyze common report requirements in several areas, such as:

• Report content Looking at the projected report catalog will give you a 10,000 foot view of the full reporting functionality that is needed. This overview will help you spot opportunities for optimization, such as consolidating two similar reports into a single report.

• Formatting Consider headers, footers, versioning info, author, dates, and similar elements that should be added to every report.

• Source code control Report definition files should be considered ...