The Report Designer

Abstract

The professional lines between system administrators, DBAs, and developers are blurring. Products are released that carry with them, if not an expectation of custom extensibility through code, then the vast potential to create a product or application that goes well beyond the out-of-the-box offerings. SRS is such an application, as will be SQL Server 2005. The days of the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) are numbered and will be overshadowed by the new interface on the block, the IDE. Actually, the IDE isn’t new at all, as any developer will tell you. However, DBAs, system administrators, and even report designers have to become familiar with this new way of working. As you’re probably already well aware, you create reports in SRS within VS.NET. This is a boon for developers, because now they can use the same IDE for report creation as they do for application development. For the rest of us, creating reports in VS.NET presents a learning curve. With SQL Server 2005 right around the bend, there’s no better time than the present to begin working in the world of the IDE. SQL Server 2005, with the delivery of the Business Intelligence Development Studio and the SQL Server Management Studio, will have essentially the same environment not only for report creation, but also for Data Transformation Services (DTS) packages, query design, database design and management, and almost all tasks currently associated with SQL Server and Analysis Services. So, now that we have our queries and stored procedures developed, we can turn our attention to VS.NET and the tools available to the report designer when SRS is installed. By the way, we’ll now work with the queries and stored procedures directly in the IDE.KeywordsData RegionBusiness IntelligenceList DataAparent GroupGlobal CollectionThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.