The Microsoft position in the Business Intelligence solutions market is irrefutable thank to the popularity of Microsoft Office suite. Thank to its seamless integration and numerous connections with the packet, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services has become a strong alternative to other reporting products in the market.

No matter what others try to prove, Microsoft isn't like any other vendor which solutions are accessible in the market. The fact that it's a vendor of the most common and popular office suite - Microsoft Office - makes it known all over the world, at every office at every organization. Children from all over the world learn how to use Microsoft Word, then Excel, and - eventually - other products of the suite. Then, these children begin to work at offices and what they expect is the same environment they know. It's not a matter of accident therefore that many other vendors try to ensure the proper integration of their solution with Microsoft Office suite. But none of them is ever going to reach the same level of integration as Microsoft itself. And that's one of the most meaningful strengths of Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, being one of the most considerable reporting solutions in the market.

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services ensures all the capabilities which are considered needed for different types of reporting - from the simplest ones for Internet publishing purposes, to the most advanced, visually perfect, and rich in information ones used for business presentations.

Building a report with Reporting Services

Preparing a report - even if isn't a very complicated task - requires quite a comprehensive environment followed with intuitive interface to last as short as possible. In case of Reporting Services, the reporting tools are based on Microsoft Visual Studio and operated from within and intuitive interface. Additionally, there is a wide set of wizards included so that the reports could be prepared even faster (thank to automation).

The first always is the source. Reporting Services is prepared for deriving data from multiple sources, including SQL Server, IBM DB2, Oracle, PowerPoint Workbooks, SQL Azure, Hyperion Essbase, SAP Netweaver BI, and many others. Once they know the sources, users may open the Microsoft Report Builder tool and start working on data within an Office looking environment. To facilitate and accelerate the work, they can use the reports components which have been prepared previously. Another benefit here is the fact that it allows even those non-technical users to prepare the reports efficiently.

The next step - and a very important one, though - is choosing the data presentation options. Users should there choose the dimension they want the report to be seen from and decide on one of the formats - tabular, matrix, or TABLIX (which is the combination of the both). Finally, they may add something to make the reports more expressive, like graphics, gauges, maps, etc.. Reporting Services provides quite a comprehensive set of options which the reports can not only be beautiful, but also easy to read thank to.

Managing a report with Reporting Services

Even though it's told that a single report could be enough to solve at least a few different problems, in the lion's share of cases organizations base on thousands of reports each month or year (depending on the scale of the organization though). However, regardless of the company scale, report management isn't a superfluous addition. Reporting Services provides users with a Report Manager tool for controlling the access to the reports. Additionally, one can easily schedule reports execution and manage report subscription.

Thank to the fact that the Reporting Services product is tightly integrated with Microsoft SharePoint, reports can be managed centrally (in an Office looking environment). Simultaneously, all the options of the title products can be configured via the Configuration Manager. What else is important, the question of data security also has got well worked out. The security model bases on role diversification and allows only users with special permissions to access determined data.

Delivering a report with Reporting Services

Once the report is prepared, it's the time to think about how to deliver it to its end users. In the matter of delivery, Reporting Services provides:

• a completely new report engine which offers a high efficiency of deliveries
• special reports in case of meeting the memory usage limits or conflicts occurring
• on-demand processing of reports what enhances the performance
• report format (PDF, CSV, XML, TIFF, HTML, DOC, XLS, so on and so forth) diversification (up to each end user's preferences)
• subscription capabilities to deliver reports at a specified time
• a possibility to spread reports via e-mails or put them into the shared folders within the network
• a chance to embed reports into other applications and/or portals.

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services resources:

http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/reporting.aspx - if only other vendors' websites looked like that... Here is everything what one could consider usable to know about the Reporting Services. Authoring, management, and delivering options - listed and explained - are preceded with short but comprehensive overview. Additionally, there is a lot of information hyperlinked on the right side of the website, including technology descriptions, so called closer look to the Reporting Services product, so on and so forth.

http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/8/4/c8470f54-d6d2-423d-8e5b-95ca4a90149a/SQLServer2008_ReportingServices_Datasheet.pdf - here's the summary of information about Reporting Services. All the Reporting Services product's features are described in a few sentences so that one could quickly discover what exactly he's being told about. However, there is no details included so that a reader is provided only with the general picture of the solution.