Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2008 All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies®

V.1.1. What Reporting Services Provides to You and Your Users

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based tool used to provide end users with data reports that are derived from SQL Server databases. SSRS has been around for several years. It first appeared in 2004 and worked with SQL Server 2000. It was improved in SQL Server 2005 and improved even more in SQL Server 2008.

Figure 1-1 shows a typical configuration using SSRS. A server is configured as a report server, and reports are created and published to the SSRS server. When a user wants to view a report, he can use Internet Explorer (or some other Web browser) to send an HTTP request. The data for the report is retrieved from the SQL Server; the report is formatted and returned to the user as an HTML page.

Figure V.1-1. A user retrieving a report from SSRS and SQL Server.

It's also possible to configure the SQL Server as an SSRS server. In other words, instead of having two servers, you could have only one. It depends on the load and the capabilities of the servers.

One of the great benefits of SSRS is that the reports become dynamic. A database developer can create the reports and publish them to the server once. When a user retrieves the data from the SSRS server, it retrieves data that is up-to-date. Users have the capability of running the reports when they need, and the data is accurate up to the moment it's ...