Detailed report services in SQL Server 2008

I. INTRODUCTION

Although companies often collect and store large amounts of data, it is sometimes difficult to display data in detail, and it is difficult to provide insights into what will happen in business so that business decision-makers can make appropriate and timely decisions for the company.

In order to make effective business decisions, users at all levels within the company from business managers to information workers need to be able to easily access reports that directly provide information that synthesizes data obtained from multiple data sources within the enterprise. In most companies, these reports require a combination of detailed numbers and text-based reports that provide a comprehensive description of the company's activities and a graphical visualization that helps make it possible to see trends and compare them better.

Reporting Services provide the company with the ability to meet a variety of reporting scenarios.

· Manage report generation. Also often used as an enterprise report generation-supports the creation of reports that cover all aspects of the business and sends reports across the enterprise so that each employee has timely access to information relevant to their business areas and enables them to make better decisions.

· Ad hoc report generation. Enable users to create their own reports and make them quickly and flexibly to get the information they need, in the format they need, without having to submit requests and wait for report developers to create reports for them.

· An inline report. Enables companies to embed reports directly into commercial applications and web portals, allowing users to use these reports during their business processes. Deep integration with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 also allows companies to send reports through a central library or directly in SharePoint using Web Parts for mildly rendered reports, making it easy to create dashboards. In this way, companies can put all the key business data of the entire company, including structured and unstructured, in a central storage address, providing a common experience for information access, so that users can browse to key business execution information.

This white paper describes how the SQL Server 2008 Reporting Service provides a comprehensive server-based platform to easily support this broad reporting requirement.