Microsoft Reporting Services in Action (In Action series) [Paperback]

Teo Lachev (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1932394222 | ISBN-13: 978-1932394221 | Publication Date: August 1, 2004

Serving as a guide to the functionality provided by Reporting Services, this book teaches developers to add reporting to any Internet or web services-capable application, regardless of its targeted platform and development language. Following the report life cycle's logical path, the book explains how to author, manage, and run RS reports. Aimed at .NET developers who plan to fully utilize this product's features to add reporting capabilities to Windows Forms or web-based applications, this guide will also benefit developers who target other platforms but want to integrate their applications with RS because of its service-oriented architecture. The accompanying code samples are written in C# and Visual Studio .NET 2003 and many sample reports are included to demonstrate all aspects of report authoring.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"A solid, methodical, example and screenshot-filled guide and a superb reference." -- Midwest Book Review

"I encourage you to use the ideas in this book and take Reporting Services to the next level." -- Brian Welcker, Group Program Manager, SQL Server Reporting
Services, Microsoft Corporation

"I highly recommend this book. I do not think I will need another RS book." -- North Texas SQL Server Users Group

"Provided wonderful insight as to how Reporting Services works ...easy to read and included good examples." -- St. Louis SQL Server User Group

"There are less than a dozen books dealing with MSRS, I think this is the best of the competition." -- Computing Reviews

"Written from a standpoint of...the developer who has to implement a solution." -- Books-On-Line

From the Author

Reporting Services (RS) is a great piece of technology. With RS, report authors can create reports as easily as you would do it in Microsoft Access. But make no mistake. Reporting Services is a sophisticated server-based oriented platform and its feature set goes well beyond that of a desktop reporting tool. To use RS effectively, you need to have a solid grasp of how it works and how it can be integrated with different types of client applications. I hope this book makes this endeavor easier.

While I contemplated what the book scope will be, it dawned on me that I could bring the most value by following my heart and approaching Reporting Services from a developer’s point of view. I put myself in a position that many developers could relate to. Here I am as a developer, consultant, architect, who is tasked with adding reporting features to a given application. How would I do this?

To reflect this idea, my book takes a solution-oriented approach and more than half of it is devoted on integrating different types of applications with Reporting Services. While you are reading the book, you will find a common pattern. It starts by discussing the requirements and design goals of a given reporting scenario. Then, it discusses the implementation choices, and, finally, it explains how the solution is implemented.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932394222
• ISBN-13: 978-1932394221
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,436,934 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Teo Lachev, MVP (SQL Server), MCSD, MCT, is a developer, author, and mentor with a focus on Microsoft Business Intelligence. Through his company, Prologika (www.prologika.com), he helps organizations make sense of data by applying the latest Business Intelligence technologies for reporting, multi-dimensional analysis, and data mining. Teo lives with his family in Atlanta, Georgia.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of tips but not good follow along examples, March 4, 2005

By 

D. Williams "horsluver" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Reporting Services in Action (In Action series) (Paperback)

I found this book to have lots of information, but if you learn best by hands on examples, this is not the book for you. The author shows you a report already done and gives a quick explanation of how he got there. It is not a step-by-step type of book. As a lot of the examples shown do not have a how-to to go with it, I found this book not a good place to start. There are others that are more hands-on and step-by-step which are easier to learn from.

Having said that, if you've had some Reporting Services experience and are just looking to brush up on techniques and/or learn additional techniques, then this book will probably save you the tediousness of having to go through a step-by-step example that you have already done in the past.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Book That Saved The Project, July 14, 2005

By 

Will Code For Food "The Ancient Programmer" (Lawrenceville, GA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Microsoft Reporting Services in Action (In Action series) (Paperback)

The project: create a secure, distributed, Internet-facing, interactive ASP.Net reporting application for a Very Large Customer. The schedule: short. The budget: low. Amazingly, we got it done, and I credit Teo and this book with helping us meet our requirements.

The Microsoft Reporting Services 1.0 documentation is not very useful to the newcomer, and with 7 months' experience now, I can also say it's not very useful to the rising journeyman. The product is quirky, with surprising gaps and baroque security features. Without expert guidance from someone who has worked with the RS dev team I don't see how anybody would get much done with Reporting Services 1.0.

Teo Lachev worked intensively with the Microsoft dev team and the book shows it. Perhaps one of the reasons other reviews here gripe about the examples is that the most useful examples are the non-trivial ones in the second half of the book. Report authoring is the easy part! Delivering your reports to your users in the ways they demand is the hard part, and in my opinion this is where Teo's book shines.

It is no exaggeration to state that without Teo's book, and in particular his discussion of custom security extensions for Reporting Services, we would have failed to deliver the goods. But we succeeded... thanks Teo.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding 'Hands-On' Guidebook & Reference, November 5, 2004

By 

J. Deutschendorf (Oklahoma City, OK USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Microsoft Reporting Services in Action (In Action series) (Paperback)

I purchased this book in mid-September, and my team and I refer to it constantly (now early November). The accompanying .Net project files and numerous sample reports are invaluable.

Teo's writing is easy to understand, and very thorough. We've purchased several Reporting Services books, and we use this one far and away more than all the others combined.

What's more Teo is pretty darn helpful in real-time too. I've emailed him on an issue and received an answer the same day.