Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services

Foreword by Thierry D'hers

Six months ago, a major change happened in the SQL Server Reporting Services team. Brian Welcker, who had been a key figure of the team since its inception, decided to change course in his career. Brian Welcker is one of the reasons Reporting Services is where it is today. When Tom Casey (General Manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence Unit) and Jason Carlson (Reporting Service Product Unit Manager) approached me 6 months ago to offer me Brian's position, I was honored, excited, and scared at the same time. How does one step into Brian's shoes? But at the same time, how do you pass on such a great opportunity to work on one of the coolest and most successful products at Microsoft?

You see, SSRS is not just a reporting product it is a platform, with pieces shipping in many different Microsoft products — from Microsoft Office SharePoint to Microsoft Visual Studio to the Microsoft Business Division suite of business-line applications. In less than 6 years, Microsoft Reporting Services has grown from a small incubation reporting server to a full product suite, with information worker client tools, DBA management and configuration tools, a scalable enterprise-ready server, developer controls, and Office add-ins. It is now a mature product that stands its ground very well against the competition.

With SQL Server 2008, Reporting Services is now in its third version — but it is not just the third version of the same code. We reached a point where the Reporting ...