Lisa Slater Nicholls SSRS: Integration into Application and Development Environments

INTRO – THE USUAL SUSPECTS The typical slides missing here: About me/what I do at SRCS/what I did at EC|Wise What we’ll cover What do YOU do? And how does that relate?

Your Role and your Organization determine how you answer these questions. Application/Front End Developer DBA/SQL Back End Developer Who owns reports? Who does requirements discovery? Who writes the data- manipulating code – and where does it go? Who documents, where and how? Who tests?

WHERE DOES OUTPUT/REPORTS/BI ANALYSIS FIT IN TO YOUR PROCESS AND BUSINESS? Standard development concerns: Requirements capture Development standards Version control Testing Documentation Smooth app Integration concerns: Usability Branding/Consistent look and feel Agile and rapid response to user needs ….

There’s a gap between reporting and the rest of IT. Bridge the gap: find a way to bring reporting/output/BI into YOUR process, so that “traffic can flow smoothly”.

Make So how do we do that for SSRS? Use tools that match other development contexts. Find the right integration context (put analysis and reports where they need to be). Let’s look at some of our options.

App Integration concerns: Usability Deciding how your app exposes SSRS Branding/Consistent look and feel Report Design tips and tricks Agile and rapid response to user needs Report Builder/PowerPivot/Dynamic Report composition… Standard development concerns: Requirements capture Development standards Simple checklists will do for a start! Version control Consider scripted deployments Testing Is automation possible? Documentation RDLDocumenter: a tool-in-progress Let’s look at some of our options.

Because we don’t have time in this presentation… Beginner tutorials abound… What we’re not going to do … so do troubleshooters… … and the docs aren’t bad.

Report Manager: Simple client over Reporting Services using SOAP interfaces Brandable (check out ) Easy first step, allows prototyping, UAT of reports. Through SharePoint: Not so easy pre-2010, Now SSRS reports can be in PowerPivot “galleries”. URL Access: Easy for UI and mid-tier developers to code, Useful when saving output to disk or re-purposing results. ReportViewer controls (web and win): Doesn’t even require Report Server! Embeddable all-in-one display within app context SOAP Access: Like Report Mgr, completely brandable within your application Most useful in tandem with ReportViewer control. Ad-Hoc reporting with Report Builder (continued later) Push Reporting Scenarios: Native subscription capabilities (edition-limited) Use SSIS instead Write your own agent-triggered app, for more complexity SSRS Exposure in your environment(s)

TopSchool Inc’s Top View, built by EC|Wise

Office 2007/2010 -style “New Document” dialog

This is the transactional database. This is the database “simplified” in a “DataWarehouse”.

Template creation, and ….. a well-designed semantic model underneath.

Item-level security is available, and can be as thoroughly-designed as the model.

Underneath

RS Scripter: download from How can you get started with all this without being a dev whiz?

BI is SO IMPORTANT…. “Everybody talks about the weather in San Francisco, and nobody does anything about it”.

Self-service Agile BI.

search.aspx ?q=dynamic DYNAMIC RESULTS CONTAINERSHIP PAGINATION RENDERER DIFFERENCES How can one RDL serve multiple ends? What techniques will dynamically create and serve an RDL on the fly? What makes the Page Header and Footer different? How can I effectively show parent-child relationships? ?q=container ?q=renderer ?q=pagination ?q=… INTERACTIVITY What good is the interactive page size? What happened to my conditional page breaks in the PDF?

search.aspx ?q=dynamic DYNAMIC RESULTS CONTAINERSHIP PAGINATION RENDERER DIFFERENCES How can one RDL serve multiple ends? What techniques will dynamically create and serve an RDL on the fly? What makes the Page Header and Footer different? How can I effectively show parent-child relationships? ?q=container ?q=renderer ?q=pagination ?q=… INTERACTIVITY What good is the interactive page size? What happened to my conditional page breaks in the PDF?

search.aspx ?q=dynamic DYNAMIC RESULTS CONTAINERSHIP PAGINATION RENDERER DIFFERENCES How can one RDL serve multiple ends? What techniques will dynamically create and serve an RDL on the fly? What makes the Page Header and Footer different? How can I effectively show parent-child relationships? ?q=container ?q=renderer ?q=pagination ?q=… INTERACTIVITY What good is the interactive page size? What happened to my conditional page breaks in the PDF?

search.aspx ?q=dynamic DYNAMIC RESULTS CONTAINERSHIP PAGINATION RENDERER DIFFERENCES How can one RDL serve multiple ends? What techniques will dynamically create and serve an RDL on the fly? What makes the Page Header and Footer different? How can I effectively show parent-child relationships? ?q=container ?q=renderer ?q=pagination ?q=… INTERACTIVITY

RDL XML Export + XSLT Transform = Quick custom renderers, including better Excel, and automate-able test results.

there’s always MORE ….

xmlRSDocs and RDLDocumenter

RDLDocumenter in 2005…… and in Sigh.Test Harness application

Bridging the gap means talking to both sides.