Database Reference
In-Depth Information
CHAPTER 8
Reporting Services
Reporting Services has an engine dedicated to the marrying of data to a
predeveloped visual design, which makes it a very useful tool for displaying
information. Reporting in general has seen a great deal of expansion in its
capabilities, and in many instances it now has overlapping use cases with
other tools. For example, in the past, other tools such as PerformancePoint
would have been considered a much more appropriate choice for producing
scorecards, but Reporting Services has expanded its capabilities and is able
to generate scorecard-type content depicting very graphical summarized
information.
Compared with all the other Microsoft business intelligence tools, Reporting
Services offers the designer the most control over visual elements, format-
ting within the reports, and rendering options such as PDF or Excel output.
Although this control is very useful, the trade-off is that every piece of layout
and interactivity must be planned and implemented while you're design-
ing reports. Offsetting this effort are the greater visualization capabilities in
Reporting Services, such as charts, gauges, indicators, trendlines, and mapping.
This chapter is an introduction to developing visualizations using Reporting
Services.
nATIVe VeRSuS InTegRATeD MoDe
Reporting Services offers two supported modes of installation and operation:
Reporting Services Native mode and SharePoint Integrated mode. No one
operating mode is best suited to all the various reporting and use scenarios
that the consumer may require. Therefore, it's important to understand just
what each mode can offer a reporting architecture.
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