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

1.1. What Is SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)?

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based reporting platform that allows you to deploy professional-looking and powerful reports fairly easily (once everything is set up). You get the drag-and-drop functionality that you may be familiar with if you have used any version of Visual Studio over the years. You can literally drop a chart onto your report, drag some data fields to the chart, and then deploy the report. You can also do more powerful things such as create pie charts where each pie segment, when clicked, takes the user to a related matrix of data where they can drill down even further to find more detail.

One of the nicer details about SSRS is that it will allow you, as a developer, to access a variety of data sources to feed the report. Of course, since it is a SQL Server product, you can easily tie into your SQL Server database. But beyond that, you can connect to a whole slew of other data objects, as seen in the following table (obtained from http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159219.aspx):

Source of Report Data	Reporting Services Data Source Type	Version of Data Source
SQL Server relational database	Microsoft SQL Server	SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2000 SQL Server 7.0
SQL Server relational database	OLEDB	SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2000 SQL Server 7.0
SQL Server relational database	ODBC	SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2000 SQL Server 7.0
Analysis Services multidimensional ...