Professional Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2007 Reporting with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

5.2. Creating Your First Report

Now that you have the database and BIDS (see Chapter 4), you are ready to create your first report. There are two primary ways to create reports: using the Report Wizard or from scratch. You will learn to create a report from scratch in the next chapter. However, in order to introduce you to the concepts involved in creating any report, this chapter will use the wizard. Hopefully, by the end of Chapters 5 and 6, you will have a pretty good idea of the differences between both approaches and be able to decide which method to use for your own reporting needs.

And, with that, it's time to start your report.

5.2.1. Creating the Dataset

A report is essentially a representation of data, right? Well, at least in the world of Reporting Services this is true. You are creating a way of looking at data that will help those using the report to understand it and use it to make business decisions. If they looked at business data sitting in a SQL table, the data wouldn't make much sense. However, with Reporting Services, you are taking raw data and putting it in a form that non-technical people can understand. The key to all of this is the data. You must have a set of data to feed the report, or the report is useless.

As discussed previously in this chapter, these reports all use the Adventure Works databases freely available from Microsoft. However, you will still need to generate a dataset for your report to use. This can be done in several different ways. ...