Customer Reviews

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

What a life saver!

I'm a software developer in a small shop and our biggest client is a large law firm with LOTS of data and users hungry for easy to read reports reflecting said data. None of us have much experience with SQL Reporting Services as most of our experience for reporting is in Crystal Reports.

I've heard of SSRS but until recently I didn't have much experience using it. Our client was in great need of a simple report so I went ahead and setup a report server and decided to give SSRS a whirl. Thankfully Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) was easy for me to grasp as I am a C# developer and I was already in comfortable territory (BIDS is really just a reporting solution in Visual Studio afterall).

I was able to create their report in a very short time and the users were comfortable using the Report Manager Website. Of course what happened next is predictable to anyone that has been in a similar situation - I became "The Report Guy" - for better or worse.

Of course our client started demanding more and more reports - increasing in complexity. I only scratched the surface of what SSRS was capable of and during that time I thought a lot of their report specs may be impossible to realize using SSRS. I began to worry. They wanted graphs, complex groupings, drill down style reports... I needed someone to throw me a life raft. Thank you Brian for throwing me that raft!

This book saved me. Even though this book is rather big weighing in at over 860 pages (including index) it was a breeze to work through. Brian has a clean, easy to read writing style and he injects a bit of humor throughout. I thought this book was going to take forever to work through but because Brian is such a good Author it really became a page turner. This book is one of the easier books to absorb. This book starts very simple and increases in complexity. Parts of the book were so relevant to my business needs that it almost seemed like he was right there telling me how to write my reports!

If there was ever a book that may have really saved my job then this is it. I now don't mind being the "Report Guy" - I feel like I can tackle just about any report spec they throw at me - all thanks to Brian Larson.

If you need to learn about SSRS then I don't see how you can do much better then this book.

I also purchased Brian's book on SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and moved up to 2008 and the book is an excellent step-by-step recipe book on how to create reports utilizing SQL Server 2008. It is an excellent book on stepping you through the numerous examples and examining how to create complex business reports.

Another great point is that when I was learning SSRS 2005 and had a problem, I emailed Brian, figuring I might hear back from him in a week or so. He replied to my email within the day and explained to me what I had to do to correct my problem. Best of all, it was right and I moved on.

His writing style is clear and concise and he doesn't miss any steps in his tutorials on creating the reports. This is one book that will be "dog eared" due to heavy use.

If you are just learning Reporting Services, this is a book targeted for you. It's very effective as a step-by-step tutorial, read cover to cover.

Like many said about the previous version of this book, this book is less useful as a reference. Larson writes with a clear, concise style, providing lots of examples, and doesn't assume that you know anything about reporting. For complete database novices, he even has a chapter on basic database concepts that provides probably all that the layperson needs to know to create basic reports. Having done some work with 2005 Reporting Services already, the basic/conceptual chapters were less valuable for me and I ended up skipping many sections. However, I still found the book quite useful and learned a couple of things that I didn't know Reporting Services could do.

This is a fine book for those having to get up to speed quickly with SSRS. Definitely not material you could get off of SQL Server Books Online.

It's a good book for learning, almost from scratch, the Reporting Services 2008 without prior knowledge of them.
The numerous step-by-step procedures (often composed from 50 steps and over) need to keep a pc in front of the book, since it would make little sense to simply read it without trying what explains. Unfortunately, in many pages, the author is rather verbose, and would have been desirable greater concision. A quarter of the book is covered by the appendices, even if those relating to the properties of various controls are almost useless, since such information can be retrieveb from the guide quickly.
The binding and pagination are impeccable. Despite the considerable size of the book is easy to keep it open on the desktop near the pc.

This book is an excellent resource for learning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services. The author leads you step by step from easy examples to more complex examples. And, the examples work! I am on page 468 of the book, and have zero complaints. He covers easy to complex reports, exporting the report and the different formats, and then Report Serving (getting it out to the customers). His style of writing is easy to understand which is very important. I would highly recommend this book. I can't say enough good about it. It's great!

I am new to SSRS. This book gave me all the information to know the benefits of SSRS, best practice programming tips and all the tools I needed to understand SSRS and explore it in more depth on my own. It is a great book. Very detailed but to the point, well explained and easy to follow examples.

This book was very good for me because I don't have a background in SSRS.
I've tried 3 other SSRS books; but, they all seem to assume you've got a background with SSRS and so the skimmed over the old material and focused on what's new. This book did a very good job in explaining SSRS, it did not presume prior knowledge on the part of the reader. The exercises were clear and informative and I didn't have any trouble installing the Galactic database. I highly recommend this book for people who are starting out with SSRS.

If you want to learn Reporting Services get this book. I've been reading tech books for 10 years and this is the best tech book I have ever purchased. Brian starts at the begining and teaches you step by step how to use Reporting Services. I have not been able to put this book down since I started reading it. It's easy to follow along with Brian and do the excercises and really learn how to use this technology.

I have long experience with other competitive tools and I found this book to answer 90% of my questions about Reporting Services. After having worked half way through I felt very confident of being able to create useful reports.

The book is more verbose than needed - the first half of the book the step-by-step instructions include a common set of steps that need to be done for every report. The good news is you can (almost) jump to any example and be able to follow the steps. The bad news is you start to wonder if we could have killed a few fewer trees by putting a reference in rather than repeating the same thing endlessly.

Okay much better book than the "unleashed" SAMS product. Honestly I admire someone willing to not use the MS Adventure Works and make up a database, but in reality that has good and bad things such as limited testing. In this case I have found the occasional misprint and after several relooks discovered the problem, not bad but a little annoying that I could not find a forum or link to "found mistakes" as this should be a standard in technical writing. That said, get past the sci-fi theme and the examples used were real enough for me to find practical application to the report I need to get out this week. I liked the pace and the do-it then explain in more detail. I will buy from this author again.
The real reason to write this review is to back flip over the kindle app. I have read books for leisure on the Kindle but never used any of the features but more importantly never even considered this form for technical books. To learn something, I love ravaging the pages- highlighting, dog-ears, and sticky note as I go so I can find the tidbits when the need for practical application comes about in my job. Surprisingly Kindle App on pc/iPhone/ipad has been the most awesome experience for me with this book. You can highlight save text, annotate and quickly review, and see what others thought was important enough to highlight. So like a used book but new. I would sync between devices and continue working. With the kindle app on my laptop and secondary monitor attached ... i read from the laptop and worked on the second monitor. Amazing how easy this made learning and no trying to hold the page while I enter the code. The next day at work I so quickly was able find anything I had annotated or highlighted it makes no sense to me to continue other forms of reading where I can literally search for days to find that one marked text.
Converted reader to the kindle app--thank you Amazon!