Customer Reviews

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (Database)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

SQL Server reporting services are a relatively new feature of SQL Server 2000, so I was quite excited to pick up a copy of this book. While this is a good beginning book for learning SQL and the basics of SQL Server reporting services, I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in both the presentation and depth of content this book provides. Again, this book provides some good explanation, however, the reader should be prepared for an introductory book, certainly not an advanced text.

The first section of the book provides a very good introduction to SQL and SQL Server. However, this is still very introductory information, and will only be useful for very beginning readers. In fact, the author doesn't begin discussing the books topic until page 161. Again, this introductory information is quite necessary to understand the rest of the text, I was just hoping for a more abbreviated version of the introductory material.

The rest of the book is actually much better and much more met my expectations. The author then proceeds to discuss how to generate reports. While much of the work involved in creating reports with SQL reporting services involves the use of a wizard, the author does a good job demonstrating how to expand reports beyond the default. The last section of the book goes through many of the more advanced options found in reporting services. There is a good discussion on exporting reports to different formats (including PDF, TIFF, and CSV). The final two chapters of the book are excellent, which discuss such advanced options as configuring subscriptions for reporting services and ASP.NET Code Access Security (CAS).

This is really a good book, it's just not as advanced as I was hoping for. While it's certainly a valuable resource for anyone working on SQL Server reporting services, it would have been preferable if the introductory content wasn't quite as extensive. In spite of this complaint, I would still recommend it.

I started reading this book when first toying with Reporting Services. I found another book that I thought did a better job. However, when I was actually having to professionally use Reporting Services and produce results, I had totally different questions and found my way back to this book. It was amazing how each question that I had was now being answered simplistically and accurately allowing me to satisfy my client and learn a new tool. This is the book to use to bring the power of Reporting Services to life.

I found Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services by Brian Larson to be both entertaining and highly informative. The three main attributes that I like were the assumed knowledge level of the reader, the order in which Mr. Larson worked through the examples he provided, and the business need paradigm which frames the whole book.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services assumes very little knowledge on the part of the reader, but manages to provide explanations and detail procedures in a manner that doesn't belittle the novice nor frustrate the more advanced user. Mr. Larson avoids the trap into which many other technical writers have fallen: abandoning the novice as the book advances. As the complexity of the examples increases, so does the assumed knowledge base of the user, but there is always a well defined trail of bread crumbs leading the novice back to the appropriate spot in the book where the skill was originally explained.

Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services works through concepts in a way that I found effective. First, Mr. Larson tells us what Reporting Services features are to be explored. Next, the business/reporting need is explained, followed by an overview of how the reader will meet that need. We then work through a task list with detailed, step-by-step instructions including images and screenshots. This is accomplished both within the confines of the friendly Visual Studio wizards, and without the wizard so the reader is exposed to what's happening behind the scenes. Finally, Mr. Larson provides the reader with further context and explanations for why tasks were necessary or why they were performed in the manner and order in which they were performed.

Finally, the entire book is framed by a desire to meet the business needs of a fictitious shipping company. Though the business and business model are highly entertaining, and I caught myself laughing aloud on several occasions, the needs of its employees are much the same as any terrestrial, real world company. Because of this, the reader stays grounded, and is led to think of ways to apply the examples, and the skills or features they illustrate, to their own business environment. In my opinion, it is this aspect of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services that is the most valuable.

Microsoft's recently released SQL Server reporting solution has many powerful capabilities such as matrices, charts and graphs, subscriptions and notifications. However, these extended features have until now been largely untapped due to a lack of proper documentation. Brian Larson's book finally fills many of the gaps by covering not only the essentials of the product, but also providing a thorough examination of the more advanced capabilities. His step-by-step approach is incredibly easy to follow. In addition,the frequent screenshots and detailed index allow you to quickly identify the information you are interested in. I highly recommend this book and give it a Five-Stars rating without hesitation.

This is the perfect book for your first day with SQL Reporting Services. The patient, step-by-step descriptions of setup and other processes are great -- as long as you're a new user. Once that period ends, though, you'll probably find, as I did, that the book suffers from two big problems. First, it's too basic - everything, even the advanced techniques, are described in that same step-by-step manner, which by now will seem very cumbersome. (Lest you think I'm exaggerating: in chapter 8, "Beyond Wow-Advanced Reporting", the user is still being told, in a separate, numbered instruction, to click OK after completing a series of steps.) Second, it's been layed out such that any attempt to read it as a reference -- that is, breaking out of the linear narrative of the step-by-step instructions and skimming through it looking for the one paragraph that describes how to do what you want to do -- is hampered by the needle-in-haystack problem of finding meaningful content amid all the instructions. Most tech books will indent example code so that it's easy to skip over; here, explanation, property lists and those darned steps are all just presented inside very large boxes. There is some font differentiation for SQL code, and there's tabular presentation of properties and values for you to assign, but the rest of the content is insufficiently differentiated for the book to be useful as a reference.
Because of these flaws, this book is not suitable as your only Reporting Services book. It might make a fine first book if your budget allows getting another, better one once you've progressed past the first couple chapters.

Its basically for a non-programmer. and it says basically on the cover thats its for DBAs. so it was my fault. too simple and straightforward. but it was good for an introduction.

I consider myself to be at a moderate knowledge base with regard to SQL Server, and I have worked with Crystal Reports and Microsoft Access reporting quite a bit. With this being my first interaction with Reporting Services, I felt Brian Larson's book was just the right pace for me. Numerous reporting examples are given, walking you through each step by step, resulting in some great reporting ideas (at least for me!) I found few if any errors in the text, and was able to zip through it cover to cover in a couple of days.

I did also purchase the Wrox text, which I will be delving into next.

Book covers how to start from zero and produce reports. He covers about every angle conceivable from that point.

If you are wanting a book digging into the guts and details of stickier reports then this is probably not the book for you. But, if you are wanting to learn this technology and have no experience then this is the book for you.

I browsed through this at a bookstore recently, and saw that many pages had lists like:

Click on File->Open
Choose this option
Choose that option
Press this button

Sigh, I don't like it when a book states what should be obvious.

This book is too low-level for my needs. Granted, I'm looking for a book that assumes that I know .NET and SQL Server already, so this may be appropriate for someone else. I just wanted to get a book that would give a good overview of the architecture, and then let me start using it ASAP. This is not quite it.

There are 2 RS (Reporting Services) books out right now, this one, one by WROX. This book is good if you are a newbie to RS, but the examples he uses are very minimal.

How to Choose:
1. If you're moderately clueless but really want to learn; use Larson's book "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services," {and maybe pick-up Murach's C# (.Net Developer)}
2. If you're a solid SQL Server user and are comfortable setting up RS and have a little C# or VB.NET experience; go with the WROX book.

You may have to do what I did and go through both RS books. I started out clueless and the WROX book would have been too much to start with. This book was a good starter for me, "an advanced newbie" but left me wanting much more.

This review will eventually be out of date, but I think I'll stand by the WROX book (though it has errors). Larson's book is going to get beat out as the entry level book pretty quickly. (as soon as someone publishes another one)

WARNING: If you have never installed SQL Server, this is not the place to start. Reporting Services is not Word. It takes a moderate level of Server knowledge to even get started.