Sams microsoft SQL server 2005 reporting services apr 2006 ISBN 0672327996

An integrated part of the Microsoft business intelligence framework, Reporting Services combines the data management capabilities of SQL Server and Microsoft Windows Server with familiar

By Michael Lisin, Jim Joseph

Publisher: Sams Pub Date: March 22, 2006 Print ISBN-10: 0-672-32799-6 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-672-32799-5 Pages: 480

Table of Contents | Index

SQL Server Reporting enables the creation, management, and delivery of both traditional, paper-oriented reports and interactive, Web-based reports An integrated part of the Microsoft business intelligence framework, Reporting Services combines the data

management capabilities of SQL Server and Microsoft Windows Server with familiar and powerful Microsoft Office System applications to deliver real-time information to support

By Michael Lisin, Jim Joseph

Publisher: Sams Pub Date: March 22, 2006 Print ISBN-10: 0-672-32799-6 Print ISBN-13: 978-0-672-32799-5 Pages: 480

Microsoft® SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services

Copyright © 2006 by Sams Publishing

All rights reserved No part of this book shall be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means,

electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,without written permission from the publisher No patent

liability is assumed with respect to the use of the informationcontained herein Although every precaution has been taken inthe preparation of this book, the publisher and author assume

no responsibility for errors or omissions Nor is any liabilityassumed for damages resulting from the use of the informationcontained herein

regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or servicemark

Every effort has been made to make this book as complete and

as accurate as possible, but no warranty or fitness is implied.The information provided is on an "as is" basis The author(s)and the publisher shall have neither liability nor responsibility toany person or entity with respect to any loss or damages arisingfrom the information contained in this book

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Sams Publishing offers excellent discounts on this book whenordered in quantity for bulk purchases or special sales For

Christopher

Michael Lisin has been in the software industry for more than

14 years with 7 of those years working with Microsoft He iscurrently working as a senior strategy consultant with MicrosoftConsulting Services Michael has been working with SQL Serverfor six years and with SQL Server Reporting Services startingfrom the pre-Beta version in 2002 Michael has taught

Reporting Services classes and presented SQL Server-relatedtopics during various events Michael will complete his MBA

degree at Texas A&M this year

Jim Joseph is a manager at Continental Airlines Inc He

currently functions as a SQL Server DBA within the FinancialSystems Group with Continental Technology He earned his MBA

at the University of St Thomas in 2003, and undergraduate

degree in mathematics from there in 1999 In his spare time,

he enjoys spending time with his infant son, Christopher, andwife Deseere

The authors would like to thank the publishing team workingwith us on this book Special thanks to: Neil, Mark, George,Karen, and Alex Thank you for your valuable feedback,

answers, and hard work on this book Without you all, this bookwould not be complete

Thank you to Brian Welcker, Richard Waymire, Robert Bruckner,Thierry D'Hers, David Crawford, Bogdan Crivat, Donovan Smith,and Eli Ilionsky for helping with questions that arose while

writing this book Thank you to Matt Whitten and Stephen

Rauch for getting Michael started with Reporting Services

Thank you to Kevin Swales for pointers about exception reports.

As the reader of this book, you are our most important criticand commentator We value your opinion and want to know

what we're doing right, what we could do better, what areasyou'd like to see us publish in, and any other words of wisdomyou're willing to pass our way

As an associate publisher for Sams Publishing, I welcome yourcomments You can email or write me directly to let me knowwhat you did or didn't like about this bookas well as what wecan do to make our books better

Please note that I cannot help you with technical problems

related to the topic of this book We do have a User Servicesgroup, however, where I will forward specific technical questionsrelated to the book

When you write, please be sure to include this book's title andauthor as well as your name, email address, and phone number

I will carefully review your comments and share them with theauthor and editors who worked on the book

SQL Server Reporting Services is a server-based, extensible andscalable platform that delivers and presents information based

on data that a business collects during its operation

Information, in turn, helps business managers to evaluate thecurrent state of the enterprise and make decisions on how toincrease revenues, reduce costs, and increase customer andemployee satisfaction

The Reporting Services scope extends from traditional paperreports to interactive content and various forms of delivery:email, file shares, and so on SSRS is capable of generating

reports in various formats, such as Hypertext Markup Language(HTML), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Excel formats,thus allowing users to manipulate their data in whatever format

is required

Before diving into this book, let's take a moment to understandthe layout as well as some of the conventions used in the book.First, we cover how this book is organized and what you canexpect in each section Second, we cover the style and

formatting conventions used in this book It is particularly

noteworthy to note the style changes in reference to code lines,including SQL Server and NET code

How This Book Is Organized

This book begins with an introductory overview of SQL Server

2005 Reporting Services and covers a broad range of topics inthe areas of report authoring, Reporting Services deploymentand administration, and custom code development for ReportingServices

The chapters in Part I, "Introduction to Reporting Services,"

highlight key features of the Reporting Services, deploymentscenarios, typical users of Reporting Services, and ReportingServices architecture This part allows for leisurely reading anddoes not require you to have access to a computer

The chapters in Part II, "Report Authoring from Basic to

Advanced," take you through report development tools andprocesses This part describes report building blocks and walksthrough building a report from simple to complex

The chapters in Part III, "Reporting Services Administration andOperations," discuss advanced topics of Reporting Services

administration, such as setting proper security, managing

Reporting Services as individual servers and in a web farm, andgathering report execution information

The chapters in Part IV, "Developing for Reporting Services,"are for those of you who might want to extend Reporting

Services and incorporate reports in their applications This partcovers key programmable aspects of Reporting Services

Server 2005, SQL Server Reporting Services, Visual Studio

8\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies) and SSRS (default is C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting

Services\ReportServer\bin)."

Error numbers, codes, and messages: "

[rsInvalidReportParameterDependency] The report parameter

'SalesOrderId' has a DefaultValue or a ValidValue that depends on the report parameter "MaxOrderId" Forward dependencies are not valid."

Names of permissions, constants, properties, collections,and variables: Execute, Fields, ReportParameter, Parent

To indicate adjustable information, we use

"{}", mostly where the variable information can be

confused with XML, for example <Value>{EXPRESSION}</Value> Inthis example, an {EXPRESSION} is any valid expression,such as =Fields!ProductImage.Value

Chapter 1 Introduction to SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

Editions of SSRS

Licensing SSRS

SSRS is Microsoft's answer to business reporting It provides aunified, server-based, extensible, and scalable platform fromwhich to deliver and present information Its scope extendsfrom traditional paper reports, to web-based delivery and

interactive content SSRS can also be configured to deliver

reports to peoples' inboxes, file shares, and so on SSRS iscapable of generating reports in various formats, such as theweb-oriented Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and desktopapplication (Microsoft Excel and CSV) formats, thus allowingusers to manipulate their data in whatever format is required

SSRS is just one of the components in the Microsoft BusinessIntelligence (BI) platform Combined, those components

provide an excellent platform for enterprise data analysis TheMicrosoft BI platform includes the following:

SQL Server The traditional database engine, which also

stores SSRS' catalog data

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) A component for

online analytical processing (OLAP) and data mining OLAPperforms data aggregation and allows users to traversefrom aggregations to details looking though the dimensions(such as geography or time) of data Data mining helpsusers to discover patterns in data

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) A component

for extracting, transforming, and loading (ETL) data

SQL Server Notification Services (SSNS) A component

for deploying and sending notifications of changing data

SSRS is unique in the Microsoft Business Intelligence suite, as itcovers a variety of information users Microsoft divides usersinto three groups: information consumers, information

explorers, and analysts

Table 1.1 briefly summarizes the percentages of users in eachgroup, the level of technical experience, and the expectationsfrom an enterprise reporting tool All of these factors will varyfrom company to company, but generally the breakdown holdstrue

Table 1.1 Breakdown of Information Workers

Type of

User Percentage

Technical Expertise Expectation

Analysts 5%-10% High Analysts can develop

reports, work with ad hoc reports, and perform sophisticated calculations (such as linear regressions and trend analysis).

Analysts often publish reports to explorers and consumers.

Information

explorers

15%-30% Medium Information explorers want

to interact with reports to some degree, such as applying filters or performing drill down through.

Information

consumers

55%-85% Low Information consumers use

static, predefined, and preformatted reports.

provides three main tools from the user perspective:

Report Viewer The primary mechanism for viewing reports

over the Web Report Manager is the name of the websitethat SSRS sets up It provides a very clean and neatly

organized user interface for end users Developers can alsoembed a Report Viewer control into both ASP.NET and

Windows Forms applications

Report Builder The tool that provides users with a front

end for ad hoc reporting against a SQL Server or AnalysisServices database Unlike most ad hoc reporting tools,

Figure 1.1 summarizes the type of reporting users, and

mentions some of the tools SSRS brings to the table for them

Figure 1.1 Reporting Services users and tools.

SSRS has a number of features to address complex businessreporting needs Over the course of this book, these featuresare explored more closely For now, here is a brief overview:

SSRS can be used across the enterprise by various userssimultaneously

SSRS leverages NET data providers and can query a variety

of data sources Examples of the NET providers are SQLServer, Oracle, Analysis Services, Microsoft Access, and

many more If needed, SSRS can also be extended throughthe custom data-processing extensions

SSRS includes delivery mechanisms to distribute reports toindividual users on demand or on a scheduled basis

As you can see, SSRS provides a comprehensive set of featuresout of the box Another nice feature of SSRS is its extensibility.Because there is no way that the developers of SSRS could

in any number of ways from embedded reports to customizedreporting solutions

Each user is likely to have favorite reports to make timely andeffective business decisions and although it is not possible tocover a whole gamut of reports in this book, some commonideas can help you think through practical applications of SSRS

Score card reports are frequently used in today's businessesand provide information for each manager on how well his

group is doing as compared to the goals set for the group

Usually, a score card implements a "traffic light" type of

highlight or a "gage" indicator Values on the score card are

highlighted in green when the group is meeting its goals, inyellow when the group is doing so-so, and in red when the

group's performance requires immediate attention Score cardreports can now take advantage of the new feature of AnalysisServices 2005: Key Performance Indicators (KPI)

When users are looking to combine a comprehensive set of

business health and "speed" gages (score card) and relatedinformation in a small space, a dashboard is used to accomplishthis goal A dashboard provides a short, typically one-page,summary view of a business (much like a car's dashboard

summarizes a car's status) and allows drill down through theitems on the top page to retrieve detailed information

SharePoint is an excellent platform to host dashboards and

greatly simplifies arranging reports in the meaningful fashion on

a page

Today, when everybody is so short on time, it might be easy tomiss an information point that could prove fatal for a business.Exception reporting is what comes to the rescue of a time-

constrained user Unlike regularly scheduled reports or

summaries provided by score cards, exception reports are

created and delivered to a user when an unusual event occurs

An exception report removes the "noise" created in periodic

example of such an anomaly could be a sudden drop in dailysales for a particular region

Other typical reports include various views of sales (geographic,demographic, product, promotion breakdowns), inventory,

customer satisfaction, production, services, and financial

information

To understand all of the ways SSRS can be used and deployed,you can simply walk through the report development life cycle,and see what features are useful in each stage

A typical reporting application goes through three stages (see

Figure 1.2): authoring, managing, and delivery SSRS providesall the necessary tools to work with a reporting application in allthree stages

Figure 1.2 Reporting life cycle.

[View full size image]

Authoring Stage of the Reporting Life Cycle

Designer is a tool that was previously available for SSRS2K ForSSRS2K, developers had to install Visual Studio 2003

Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the Report

Designer to function Although integration with Visual Studio isstill available in SSRS, today developers have a choice to useReport Designer within Visual Studio IDE or to use Report

Designer within Business Intelligence Development Studio

(BIDS) The Business Intelligence Development Studio shell hasgone through changes from Beta 2 of SSRS Starting from theCommunity Technology Preview release of SSRS, Visual StudioExpress Edition, a free version of Visual Studio 2005 is includedwith SQL Server 2005 as a shell for the Report Designer TheReport Designer interface is shown in Figure 1.3

Figure 1.3 Report Designer.

[View full size image]

targets developers and provides extensive design capabilitiesand can handle a variety of data sources Report Designer canwork with all reports generated for SSRS, including reports

generated by Report Builder Report Designer incorporates thefollowing productivity features:

Import Access reports, which allows designers to importMicrosoft Access reports and creates a report definition inturn In complex cases, it might not be able to successfully

or completely import an Access report The general rule ofthumb is that SSRS will be able to convert approximately80% of the existing Access reports

NEW in 2005IntelliSense for expression editing, which

provides assistance with the syntax of a function used inexpressions, names of class members, and indicates syntaxerrors in expressions by underlining them with squiggly redlines You will see more details of this feature in Chapter 8,

"Expressions."

NEW in 2005Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) and Data

Mining Expressions (DMX) query designer, which provides adrag-and-drop interface for writing MDX and DMX queries.This feature is covered in more details in Chapter 15,

"Working with Multidimensional Data Sources."

Relational query designer, which provides a drag-and-dropinterface for writing SQL queries

Report Wizard, which provides step-by-step instructions tocreate a report

Publishing and deployment functionality, which allows a

report designer to publish a report to a target server Forexample, the developer might choose to publish to a

Before an end user can develop a report, a developer must

create a model, using the Model Builder tool Figure 1.4 depictsthe Model Builder's interface A model is similar to a report, inthat a model is a file written in Extensible Markup Language(XML) with an extension of SMDL A model defines layout, datasources, data entities, and relationships in terms that are

understood by end users and not in terms of SQL or MDX

Figure 1.4 Model Builder.

[View full size image]

an end user can create ad hoc reports, based on the publishedmodel Figure 1.5 shows the Report Builder interface

Figure 1.5 Report Builder.

[View full size image]

Report Builder targets end users and provides access to datasources predefined in a mode.

party vendors to develop custom authoring tools

Services database RDL is an open language that allows third-Managing Stage of the Reporting Life Cycle

During this stage, the report author publishes the report to acentral location where it can be managed by a report

administrator in terms of security and delivery This central

location is a SSRS database After the report is published, theadministrator can use Report Manager, custom written scripts,third-party tools, or SQL Server Management Studio to managepublished reports The report administrator can

Assign the report's security or the right a user might have

to a report

Establish execution control, such as selecting a time of anexecution or caching options

Access and organize subscriptions from a single location

Control report execution properties, which controls how andwhen reports are processed For example, the administratorcan set processing options to prevent a large report fromrunning on demand

Set timeout values to prevent a single report from

overloading system resources

preferences Users who prefer to view a report in Excel, forexample, can specify that format in a subscription

Automate report distribution through data-driven

subscriptions A data-driven subscription generates a

recipient list and delivery instructions at runtime from anexternal data source A data-driven subscription uses a

query and column-mapping information to customize reportoutput for a large number of users

Set delivery methods for a report, such as file share, printer(this would require a custom extension in the current

release, which is discussed in Chapter 26, "Writing CustomReporting Services Extensions"), or email

Figure 1.6 depicts the Report Manager's interface

Figure 1.6 Report Manager.

[View full size image]

Figure 1.7 Reporting Services Configuration

Manager.

[View full size image]