Understanding Reporting Services - Microsoft Business Intelligence Tools for Excel Analysts - page 227

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Understanding
Reporting Services

In This Chapter

Getting to know Reporting Services

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Building Reporting Services solutions

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Deploying reports

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Managing subscriptions

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SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a robust, flexible, and fully capable enterprise-grade reporting tool.
It's important to understand that SSRS is a reporting tool — not a dashboarding tool. Dashboarding refers
to interactive analytics applications delivered over the Web to your desktop, tablet, or smartphone that
allow you to slice and dice predefined data views that represent your most important metrics. Reporting ,
on the other hand, indicates a somewhat static presentation of the data with some parameterized options
and minimal navigation functionality between reports. Reporting functionality is geared toward mass con-
sumption in the form of e-mail subscriptions or an on-demand, browser-based review of the data.

This chapter gives you a high-level overview of SSRS and provides a solid understanding of what
SSRS can do for you.

Reporting Services Overview
You may find it difficult to comprehend why you should make the leap from Excel reporting to the
unfamiliar world of SSRS. The truth is that SSRS has several strengths and advantages that you should
consider:

➤ Easier build-out of automated SQL reporting: Because SSRS is closely integrated into the
SQL Server environment, you can build automated reporting mechanisms much easier than
you can with Excel. Native links between SSRS and SQL Server bypass the need for the man-
agement of external data connections, or any sort of VBA scripting. SSRS allows for the

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