Databases Reference
In-Depth Information
Report Designer
As the name suggests, the Report Designer is used to create the infra-
structure of and layout for a report. The infrastructure first requires spe-
cification of one or more data sources. Data sources supported include
anything accessible through the list of Providers shown in the Data Link
Properties dialog (what you're used to seeing when creating data sources
for other purposes). For the extraction of specific data, you have query
builders that facilitate the query building process. This is built into Busi-
ness Intelligence Development Studio and hosts a similar look and feel to
Analysis Services and Integration Services projects. These tools enable
the creation of tabular and matrix-based reports. In addition, charts are
also supported. You can customize your report to span multiple pages
based on conditionals and grouping; this capability supports readability
as does the judicious use of fonts and colors. Note that less is often more
when it comes to things like fonts and colors; the fewer variations dis-
played in a report, the more meaningful are those that are used. So, for
best results, use the power of customization sparingly! If you are not
already dizzy from wielding all this power, note that you can specify para-
metric reports and subreports. And the user can seamlessly navigate all
these reports because you can provide clickable cells in the reports. Once
you have defined your report, it can be previewed within the designer;
only after you are pleased with the layout do you deploy the report to a
report server.
Report Definition Language
Report Definition Language (RDL) is an XML-based language used to spe-
cify all the characteristics which make up a report; RDL is created in
the Report Designer and manifests itself when a report is processed and
viewed. When you create your report, all the definitions are in this form
of XML. It is this definition that is deployed on to the server. If you are a
reporting whiz, you might take to editing RDL files easily; all of the ele-
ment definitions and appropriate XML Diagrams are described in Books
On-Line. Beware that any malformed XML you feed the report server will
likely have less than desirable consequences at runtime! The following
table shows some sample report definition XML elements from Books On-
Line:
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