Chapter 9: On-demand Report Delivery
The author explains and shows how to deliver a RS via URL, Web services, parameters, commands, etc. The author also uses a short example showing how to integrate RS in a WinForm app via URL, Web service and Web browser ActiveX control. The author then demonstrates how to invoke and render a RS with SOAP with detailed explanations and annotation on the code listings. Last but not least, the author compare and contrast the URL and Web service approach, and tells readers how to choose their best integration method.
Chapter 10: Reporting for Windows Forms Applications
The very first sentence explains everything: “Reporting is an integral part of every complete Windows-based application.” I have to quote this sentence because I can’t find any better phrase to describe the importance of this chapter! The author uses a complete example and various techniques to create a report in a Windows Forms application. Moreover, he shows the best practices like implementing caching and multithread in calling the report as well (Thumbs up!).
Chapter 11: Reporting for Web-Based Applications
Various ways to report off data with the use of RS in the ASP.NET world. Web reporting is my favorite as it is handy and reaches broad audience of users. However, it is difficult to design and manage due to the stateless nature and variety of requesting browsers. The author shows us how easy it is to create a report for Web application with RS by demonstrating various ways to generate a report through Query String both in client and server sides. Moreover, the author shows the use of Report Viewer control and image handling, and covers security issues as well. This chapter is pretty short and fast in my opinion, but it’s still worth a look.
Chapter 12: Reporting for OLAP Applications
Develop reports for OLAP application in a few steps with RS. Like other readers, SQL Server, data warehousing, DTS and Pivot tables are indispensable in my daily job, so the ease and power of RS in this area are exceptionally important. In this chapter, the author first explains some background information and definition of OLAP models and cubes briefly, and then shows us how to create a multiple dimensions OLAP reports with RS. The author tries to use many screen shots and make complicate business intelligent processes look interesting, and then the author shows how to define and setup each dimension for the example case, create a report dataset and then present the data in a dynamic and custom way. This chapter can go into further details and I would expect this chapter to be the core of this book. I feel that the author tried to make this chapter short (for example, the author just use 2 paragraphs in explaining how to create dynamic and drilldown report only) and favors to beginners. However, the introductory part is insufficient and brief, so the weight of this chapter becomes unbalance.
Chapter 13: Enterprise Reporting
Design a reporting mechanism for enterprise by understanding the requirements and needs. The author first describes the high level view of RS and environment of an enterprise, and then he uses few pages in explaining the security and authorization issues, like configuration of application roles, groups and permission in executing reports.
Chapter 14: Subscribed Report Delivery
Understand and create report subscription services to users in RS. Subscribed report delivery is a cool and fancy feature in RS, the author first describes the basic concept of this service, like the publisher and subscriber in SQL Server, and then he explains and demonstrates each type of available subscription service in RS. Next, the author shows how to configure and manage the delivery options and let the report go into the subscribers’ data store. Delivery report by subscription is a useful and easy chapter, because I believe readers are able to manage the report destination via the build-in RS wizard easily, but the point is to teach them understand the concept behind the scene so that they can design the best approach by understanding the publishing and subscription relationship.
Chapter 15: Extended Reporting Services
Explore the features of RS and integrate RS in custom projects. Readers own the techniques and information of creating and delivering reports from previous chapters, then the author discuss some advanced techniques and concepts about RS, such as the design goal and trade of some features. This chapter is for those experienced developers that want to integrate RS into their own applications. Advanced features like implementing custom delivery extension and customer security extension are covered in this “bonus” chapter.
Chapter 16: Performance and Scalability
Evaluate and examines the performance and scalability of RS by understanding the internal structure and FAQs of using RS. This is the last chapter and contains 2 sections only (exclude the summary and resource sections), but the authors shows the internals of RS like latency, throughput and utilization rate in this chapter. Moreover, the author demonstrates how to set up a testing and evaluation environment Application Center Test (ACT) in Visual Studio .NET.
Conclusion
Microsoft RS provide a platform for customers to deliver report bundle with SQL Server 2000 license. The entry of RS to business intelligent reporting plus the standardization and cooperation with other reporting vendors like Cognos, the reporting market and direction are bright, and this book is definitely a good opening in the reporting services story. However, this book has a serious problem – cross reference. The author and editorial teams used a lot of cross reference, such as “we cover XX in chapter YY”, “We’ll see an example of this in XX”, “We’ll postpone discussing XX until…”. These kind of sentences appeared many times in few chapters, and this might confuse the readers, or in reality this is a fault of the design and structure of this book itself. At any rate, this book is very rich in content and definitely a good read for all reporting developers and administrators.