RS editions
To address different user needs, RS is available in several editions, as you can see by looking at table 1.3.
|
Edition |
Choose When...... |
|
Standard |
You need to install RS on a single computer. The Standard
edition doesn’t support clustered deployment to load-balance multiple RS
instances. |
|
Enterprise |
You need all RS features, including load balancing. |
|
Developer |
You have to integrate RS with client applications or extend
its capabilities by writing .NET code. The Developer edition supports the
same feature set as the Enterprise edition, but it is for use as a test and
development system, not as a production server. |
|
Evaluation |
You need to evaluate RS. The Evaluation edition expires
after 120 days. |
Table 1.3 RS supports editions to meet various reporting needs
For more information about how the RS editions differ, refer to the product documentation or the “Reporting Services Features Comparison” section in the RS official website at http://microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/features.asp. For information about RS licensing requirements, visit the “How to License Reporting Services” page at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/howtobuy/howtolicensers.asp.
1.1.3 RS and the Microsoft BI platform
RS is positioned as an integral part of Microsoft’s business intelligence (BI) platform. This platform is a multiproduct offering whose goal is to address the most common data management and analysis challenges that many organizations face every day, such as analyzing vast volumes of data, trend discovery, data management, and of course, comprehensive reporting.
During the RS official launch presentation on January 27, 2004, Paul Flessner, Microsoft senior vice president of Enterprise Services, outlined the place of RS in the Microsoft BI platform offering, as shown in figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1 The Microsoft BI platform consists of several products layered on top of the SQL Server database engine and addresses various data management and reporting needs.
Table 1.4 outlines the purpose of the major building blocks within the Microsoft BI platform.
|
Component |
Purpose |
|
Microsoft SQL Server |
A relational database to store data |
|
Analysis Services |
An analytical processing (OLAP) engine |
|
Data Transformation Services |
Tools for extracting, transforming and loading data |
|
Reporting Services |
Server-based reporting platform for report authoring,
management and delivery |
|
Replication Services |
Replicates data to heterogeneous data sources |
|
Microsoft Office |
Desktop applications for data analysis and reporting |
|
SharePoint Portal Server |
Business Intelligence collaboration |
|
Visual Studio.NET |
A development tool to create .NET-based applications,
including analytical and reporting solutions. |
Table 1.4 The key Microsoft BI platform components
Most of you have probably used more than one of these products in the past to solve your data management and analysis needs. Indeed, most of them have been around for a while. What was missing was a product for authoring, managing, and generating reports that could be easily integrated with all types of applications. RS fills the bill nicely.
Having introduced you to RS, let’s take a panoramic view of its features to understand why it can be such a compelling choice for enterprise reporting.
1.2 RS AT A GLANCE
Even in its first release, RS offers a broad array of features that can address various reporting needs:
- Information workers can leverage RS to author both standard (“canned”) reports and reports with interactive features. Here, we use the term “standard” to refer to reports that display static data. An interesting aspect of RS is that your reports can include a variety of features that provide interactivity to users. For example, the end user can show or hide items in a report and click links that launch other reports or web pages.
- Third-party vendors can target RS to package reports as a part of their applications. For example, if customers have RS installed, the vendor setup program can upload the report files to the Report Server. You’ll see this done in chapter 2. Note that the next version of RS is expected to include stand-alone controls for generating reports directly from report files and will not require RS to be installed.
- Organizations can use RS to report-enable their business-to-business (B2B) or businesstoconsumer (B2C) applications. For example, an organization can selectively expose some of its data in the form of reports to its business partners. You’ll see an example of a similar integration scenario in chapter 11.
Let’s now get a glimpse of the RS landscape and observe some of RS’s most prominent landmarks. Don’t worry if you find you are not getting the Big Picture yet. In section 1.3, we take a closer look at the main pieces of the RS architecture.
1.2.1 Authoring features
As a report author, with RS you have several choices for creating reports. We discuss each of these options in detail in chapter 2. For now, we’d like to introduce you to the Report Designer; this will likely be the option that you will use most of the time for report authoring.
Introducing the Report Designer
Using the Report Designer graphical environment, you can create reports of different types, such as crosstab drilldown reports, like the one shown in figure 1.2. RS doesn’t restrict your report-authoring options to static paper-oriented reports. Instead, you can make your reports more versatile and easy to use by adding interactive features, such as expandable sections, hyperlinks, and document maps. Given its tight integration with the Visual Studio. NET integrated development environment (IDE), the Report Designer provides you with access to all report design features as well as team development features, such as source code management.
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