Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services


Introduction
Although companies often collect and store large amounts of data, it is sometimes difficult to present that data in a meaningful way and provide insight into what is going on in the business to enable business decision makers to make relevant and timely decisions for the company.
To be able to make effective business decisions, all types of users across the company from business managers to information workers need to have easy access to informative and intuitive reports that combine data from the many data sources throughout the enterprise. In most organizations, these reports need to combine detailed numeric and text-based reports that provide a comprehensive account of business activity, with graphic visualization that help provide a better view of trends and comparisons.
Reporting Services provides companies with the ability to fill a variety of reporting scenarios.
  • Managed Reporting. Also often referred to as enterprise reporting - supports the creation of reports that span all aspects of the business and delivers them across the enterprise to provide every employee real time access to information relevant for their business area and enable better decision making
  • Ad-Hoc Reporting. Enables users to create their own reports on an ad-hoc basis and provides them with the flexibility to quickly get the information that they need, in the format that they need it without submitting a request and waiting for a report developer to create the report for them.
  • Embedded Reporting. Enables organizations to embed reports directly into business applications and web portals, enabling users to consume reports within the context of their business process. Deep integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 also enables organizations to deliver reports through a central report library or to use new web parts for thin rendering of reports directly within SharePoint enabling easy creation of dashboards. In this way organizations are able to bring all business critical data, structured as well as unstructured, from across the company together in one central location providing one common experience for information access so that users can see key business performance information at a glance.

This whitepaper describes how SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services provides a complete, server-based platform to easily support this wide variety of reporting needs.

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