By Ronald Barrett
When I first saw the title of this virtual lab I thought it would be shorter had they called it “everything but the kitchen sink”. But seriously as daunting as the name sounds, and as difficult as the lab might be deemed based upon the name, the areas covered in the virtual lab all fall under the new enhancements for Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008.
The new enhancements have been designed to allow non-developers to create detailed and professional reports from within the available SQL data easily. The Report Designer is now a standalone application within SQL Server 2008. As the lab explains, the Report Designer can now be run separately from the Business Intelligence Development Studio. The new application can be used to create purchase orders, invoices, contracts, etc.
For this SQL Server TechNet Virtual Lab: Reporting Services Enhancements: Report Designer, Visualizations, and Tablix, users will go through the exercise of creating:
Templates
Tablix Tables
Charts
Once you open the Report Designer, you’ll notice the now very familiar Office Ribbon navigation tools.
As you go through the exercise of creating Tablix tables you will notice that Report Designer has many familiar tools for those who may have worked with products like Crystal Reports.
TIP: When editing the Value expression, you must remove the ( ) around the expression as well as =Sum. Failure to do so will make step o. of the exercise fail.
Next, we will look at creating charts in the Report Designer.
TIP: Step b in the chart task tells you to drag the chart item to the design surface. In the exercise, there was no visible chart item. However, going to the Insert tab and clicking on the chart icon produces the same results.
The lab shows you several very quick but effective techniques for creating reports and charts with very little data manipulation. In fact, most of the design aspect is simply drag and drop.
The lab continues with very detailed changes to charts and finishes by showing the results of your work within Internet Explorer using the Report Manager Intranet page.
Report Designer, Visualizations, and Tablix is a great lab for both users who need to create reports in SQL Server 2008 and Admins who want to understand what the users need to do to generate reports and how it is they can better support them through the process.