Microsoft Reporting Services in Action, Manning
Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio
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C# Online.NET Book Review
SQL Server Reporting Services (RS) is a comprehensive, server-based package that enables the developer to create, manage, and deliver either or both paper reports and interactive, Web-based reports. Reporting Services is an integrated part of the Microsoft business intelligence framework.
The first half of the book teaches the basic skills needed by system administrators for creating reports and securing the Reporting Services environment. The second half explores the more advanced, programmatic techniques required by developers to integrate Reporting Services with Web applications and Windows Forms.
Especially in the latter half, there are many useful, practical examples which can be extended to address your individual reporting requirements. Also, screen shots are plentiful. Overall, the book, clearly, is aimed at developers. In the end, you will have an appreciation and enthusiasm for both the power and flexibility of Reporting Services.
The author writes in an economical, but readable, style. The author explains technicalities in a concise, logical manner. And, he takes the time to explain the pros and cons of every possible reporting solution. In creating this book, the author worked closely with the Microsoft Reporting Services Development Team; and, as a result, it is—perhaps—the best book on the market.
All of the source code examples are in the C# language.
Bottom line
Microsoft Reporting Services in Action is an excellent guide, how-to, and reference for developers.
From the back cover
Business reporting is a lifeline of business, so a better reporting environment is a big deal. With a sophisticated, modern tool like Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, you can report-enable any type of application, regardless of its targeted platform or development language.
Written for information workers, system administrators, and developers, this book is a detailed and practical guide to the functionality provided by Reporting Services. It systematically shows off many powerful RS features by leading you through a dizzying variety of possible uses. Following a typical report lifecycle, the book shows you how to create, manage, and deliver RS reports.
In the first half, you will master the skills you need to create reports. System administrators will learn the ropes of managing and securing the report environment. The second half of the book teaches developers the techniques they need to integrate RS with their WinForm or web-based applications. It does this with the help of a wide variety of real-world scenarios which will give you ideas on how to use RS in addition to teaching you the ropes.
An experienced software designer and developer, Teo Lachev works as a technology consultant with the Enterprise Application Services practice of Hewlett-Packard. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and a Microsoft Certified Trainer. Teo lives in Atlanta, GA.
What's Inside
- Extend RS with custom code
- Implement dynamic reports with Office Web Components
- Create reports off ADO.NET datasets
- Deliver reports to Web Services
- Expose reports as RSS feeds
- Customize RS security
- Evaluate RS performance and capacity
- and more
About the author(s)
Teo Lachev has more than 11 years of experience designing and developing Microsoft-centered solutions. He is currently working as a technology consultant with the Enterprise Application Services practice of Hewlett-Packard. Teo is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer and Microsoft Certified Trainer. He lives in Atlanta, GA.
Table of Contents (abbreviated)
1 Introducing Microsoft Reporting Services
Part 1 Authoring reports
2 Report authoring basics
3 Working with data
4 Designing reports
5 Using expressions and functions
6 Using custom code
Part 2 Managing reports
7 Managing the Reporting Services environment
8 Securing Reporting Services
Part 3 Delivering reports
9 On-demand report delivery
10 Reporting for Windows Forms applications
11 Reporting for web-based applications
12 Reporting for OLAP applications
13 Enterprise reporting
14 Subscribed report delivery
Part 4 Advanced reporting
15 Extending Reporting Services
16 Performance and scalability
A Installing Reporting Services
Foreword
Let me let you in on a little secret: creating software at Microsoft is pretty similar to creating software at any other company. I think many people’s perception is that Microsoft designs products by having an army of market researchers carefully examining competitive products and surveying consumers to determine exactly what features to put in the next release.
The reality is that most of the ideas that go into Microsoft products are the result of small teams of people brainstorming in front of whiteboards or chatting in hallways. I’m not saying we don’t know what competitors are doing or what customers are asking for, but the process of translating real-world scenarios to requirements and designs is much more organic than you might think. This flexible approach allows teams to take a fresh look at existing problems as well as adapt to industry trends and customer demands.
Case in point: when we started building Reporting Services, we didn’t set out to copy what other companies had already done. Instead, we asked questions like "What does it mean to build an enterprise reporting product?" "How do we enable people to create powerful data visualizations without writing code?" and, most important of all, "How can we build a platform that people can leverage in their own applications?" The answer to this final question ended up driving a major part of the product’s design.
Building a platform is not something to be taken lightly. It requires that you spend extra time factoring and documenting the interfaces between software components. It means that your components should not use any "back doors" that are not available to other developers using the platform. It also can change the order in which you build the product—you have to focus on the nonvisual parts of the product before you work on the user-facing ones. For example, the Reporting Services report processing engine was up and running about a year before the graphical report design tool was ready. During this time, report definition files had to be hand-coded in order to test any new report processing features.
The decision to build a platform also means that you will have to spend time on infrastructure and interfaces at the expense of end-user features. We knew that this trade-off would mean the first version of Reporting Services might look less feature-rich than other more "mature" reporting products. We felt like this was the right long-term strategy, as a strong platform would enable others to fill the gaps instead of having to wait for us to add every feature. When asked about this approach, I sometimes pose the question, "Is it better to build a car with a powerful engine and fewer lights on the dashboard or one with lots of lights that can’t go anywhere?"
One decision we made for our new platform was to bet on another new platform: .NET. As we had no legacy code to support, we decided early on to make Reporting Services a 100 percent .NET application. While this may seem like a no-brainer today, when we started building Reporting Services the CLR and the .NET Framework had not yet been released. Although building an enterprise-quality server product on such a new technology stack was a little risky at the time, the decision has paid major dividends in developer productivity and product quality.
Ultimately, the barometer of whether we have succeeded is what our customers and partners are able to build on the platform. Since we released the first version of the product earlier this year, I have seen applications built by customers leveraging the Reporting Services platform in ways I never imagined. But a platform isn’t useful if all developers don’t have the know-how to take advantage of it. Because the product is so new, detailed information and good examples have been sparse and hard to find.
That’s where resources like Teo’s excellent book come in. This book starts by providing a solid foundation for using the built-in tools included with Reporting Services but quickly takes you to the next level by focusing on the programmability and extensibility aspects of the product. The focus on these parts of Reporting Services will help you leverage and extend the product feature set in your own applications. Teo’s approach is to provide real-world examples and useful scenarios that walk you through the details and give you new ideas to explore. Teo has the ability to take complex topics and break them into smaller sections that can be easily understood. I enjoyed being one of the book’s technical reviewers as I was able see how various parts of the product came to life on the page. I encourage you to use the ideas in this book and take Reporting Services to the next level.
Brian Welcker
Group Program Manager
Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services
