Report Builder - Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - page 369

Report Builder

This chapter looks at performing ad hoc reporting. In March 2004, Microsoft purchased a company
by the name of ActiveViews. ActiveViews had a technology that allowed users to build a user-
friendly model on top of their data. This model has become the backbone of ad hoc reporting in
Reporting Services.

As you move through this chapter, you will be introduced to the Report Builder application. The
Report Builder application has a familiar Microsoft Office interface for building reports. You will
also see how to use different report layouts to fulfill various reporting needs. Once you under-
stand the report layouts, you will move on to formatting and filtering data. The chapter ends with
a few administrative items you need to be aware of when deploying this tool to your users.

In this chapter, you learn:

❑ What Report Builder is and how it can be used.

❑ How to create reports with Report Builder.

❑ How to format Report Builder reports.

❑ How to add filtering and sorting to your reports.

❑ How to create calculations in a report.

❑ Administration tasks with Report Builder.

Building Report Models
Report Models are the key to creating ad hoc reports. They represent the semantic layer on top of
your SQL Server of Analysis Services data. Report models help users easily identify data elements
as well as navigate their relationships.