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

4.4. Summary

In this chapter you were introduced to the powerful report-authoring tool BIDS. The chapter started by going over the tool windows available in Business Intelligence Development Studio. Also, it highlighted the report items used when a report is created. Whether treating a tool window or a report item, each section included a valuable piece of information that will help you in the real world of report developing.

This chapter touched on real-life problems such as the dataset caching on previews. Knowing that BIDS caches the dataset when creating the preview will help you troubleshoot your report issues faster. There are times when the simplest things take the longest amount of time to figure out. And the goal of this chapter was to get you started on the right foot so that you don't lose much time trying to figure out these mysterious BIDS issues.

After reviewing all of the tools available in BIDS, you also got your feet wet using BIDS by running a 20-step walkthrough and creating a report using the wizard. With a matter of a few clicks you created a very informative report. This chapter did not talk about the best practices for creating your first report, because that will be covered in the next chapter.

After completing this chapter, you should now know where to find the tools you need when you're creating reports. As a report author, it's important that you know what you have in your toolbox and how to access it. You know what BIDS stands for and you know what ...