Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) [Paperback]

Paul Turley (Author), Thiago Silva (Author), Bryan C. Smith (Author), Ken Withee (Author)

Book Description

Series: Wrox Programmer to Programmer | Publication Date: December 22, 2008

• Teaches solution architects, designers, and developers how to use Microsoft's reporting platform to create reporting and business intelligence (BI) solutions
• Updated with new information about holistic BI solutions, comprehensive OLAP/Analysis Services reporting, and complete production deployment scenarios
• Includes programming examples focused on specific, scenario-based solutions
• Explains reporting services architecture and business intelligence, teaches the fundamentals of designing reports through the use of careful planning considerations, and covers advanced report design and filtering techniques

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services makes reporting faster and easier than ever. This hands-on guide will show you how to harness the full power of Reporting Services to create reporting and business intelligence solutions that meet your company's needs. It walks you step-by-step through the fundamentals of designing the most effective reports by following careful planning considerations.

The authors progress from beginning to advanced report design and filtering techniques, showing you the conditions where reports could be more efficient. They also explore holistic business intelligence solutions, comprehensive OLAP/Analysis Services reporting, and complete production-deployment scenarios.

You'll learn how to write custom expressions and program functions to meet specific reporting needs. This will help you design, build, and deploy reports with capabilities far greater than any other reporting tools you may have used in the past. The techniques covered in the book will also enable you to take reporting further than you have before and provide your users with real business intelligence.

What you will learn from this book

• Using reports to visualize important business-decision metrics

• Building the presentation layer for an enterprise business intelligence solution

• Reporting from OLAP cubes and relational database systems

• Enabling information workers to easily create their own self-service reports

• Real-world report design patterns and recipes

• Designing and deploying reports for enterprise portals and dashboards, including SharePoint technologies

• Advanced object-oriented programming techniques for extending and adding functionality to Reporting Services

Who this book is for
This book is for report designers, developers, administrators, and business professionals interested in learning the advanced functionality, reporting, server administration, and security issues of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.

Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.

About the Author

Paul Turley (Vancouver, WA) is a Manager of Specialized Services for Hitachi Consulting Education Services. Paul manages the Business Intelligence training team and teaches classes for companies throughout the world on Microsoft SQL Server technologies. He works with companies to design architecture for and build BI and reporting solutions. He has been developing business database solutions since 1991 for companies like Microsoft, Disney, Nike, and Hewlett - Packard. He has been a Microsoft Certified Trainer since 1996 and holds several industry certifications, including MCTS and MCITP for BI, MCSD, MCDBA, MSF Practitioner, and IT Project+.
Paul has authored and coauthored several books and courses on database, business intelligence, and application development technologies. He is the lead courseware developer for the Hitachi Consulting courses: “ SQL Server 2008 Business Intelligence Solutions ” and “ SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Solutions. ” His books include Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services , Professional SQL Server Reporting Services (SQL Server 2000) , Beginning Transact - SQL with SQL Server 2000 and 2005 , Beginning SQL Server 2005 Administration , Beginning Access 2002 VBA , Data Warehousing with SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services , and Professional Access 2000 Programming — all from Wrox. He is also a contributing author to SQL Server 2005 Integration Services Step by Step from Microsoft Press.

Thiago Silva (Dallas, TX) is a Manager of Specialized Services for Hitachi Consulting. Thiago has also been designing and developing custom .NET, business intelligence, and Reporting Services solutions since the early days of .NET and SQL Server 2000. He is a part of the Microsoft Strategic Alliance leadership group within Hitachi Consulting, where he helps create, manage, and deliver internal training materials and intellectual capital around the Microsoft technology stack. He also teaches the SQL Server Reporting Services course offered by Hitachi Consulting.
Thiago has been a featured guest on the talk show podcast .NET Rocks and is an active member of the .NET development community, frequently writing on his blog Silvaware, at http://silvaware.blogspot.com. Thiago holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Management Information Systems from Texas A & M University, and a MCAD.NET technical certification.

Bryan C. Smith (Irving, TX) is a Manager of Specialized Services for Hitachi Consulting. Bryan has been developing and administering database solutions since 1997 for clients in a variety of industries. These days, he focuses on helping clients build Business Intelligence solutions using the Microsoft SQL Server product suite. Bryan holds MCITP, MCTS, MCDBA, A+, Network+, and Server+ certifications, and serves as an instructor for Hitachi Consulting ’ s SQL Server Analysis Services course.

Ken Withee (Seattle, WA) is a Senior Consultant with Hitachi Consulting. He earned a Master of Science degree in Computer Science studying under Dr. Edward Lank at San Francisco State University. Their work has been published in the LNCS journals and was the focus of a presentation at the IASTED conference in Phoenix. Their work has also been presented at various other Human Computer Interaction conferences throughout the world.
Ken has more than 7 years of professional computer and management experience working with a vast range of technologies.
Ken is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist and is certified with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and SQL Server 2005, and has passed the certification exam for .NET 2.0.

Product Details

• Paperback: 816 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 1 edition (December 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470242019
• ISBN-13: 978-0470242018
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #75 in Books > Computers & Technology > Microsoft > Development > SQL Server

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good for developers, June 8, 2009

By 

D. Dollahite (Connecticut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

I have the 2005 version of the same book and reviewed it here: http://www.amazon.com/Professional-Server-2005-Reporting-Services/product-reviews/0764584979/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R202BG2RSEPRFO. Just copy and paste that link to read it. I bought the 2008 version when we decided to go SSRS 2008 to get a bug fixed on the matrix control overrunning the page width with dynamic columns. Pretty much everything I said in that review for the 2005 book applies to the 2008 book. I don't know why people bash this book. It gives you what you need. Actually, it covers quite a bit. I used one section to help me create my own app to better control report publishing. I can see if all you do is report design and don't have to worry about any kind of maintenance, programming, or administration this book might be a little thin on content. But it still gives you what you need, and if you are a beginning report designer then you shouldn't be looking at any book with "Professional" in the title. Get the "Beginner" one. This is for developers with a fair amount of experience in report design. It certainly isn't 100% of what you'll ever need. You'll find yourself constantly scouring the web for workarounds and code samples. But I also have the Microsoft SSRS 2008 book and that pretty much covers less but it geared more toward walk-throughs. This one definitely has more content. I can't see doing what I do without this book.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good admin info, not so much on report design, March 25, 2009

By 

WebDev511 "BI Pro" (San Jose, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

The back end info is very good, but the report design section suffers because it was written before the report designer was done.

Buy it if you want the updated backend info, wait for a second edition if you are more interested in report design/development.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book on SSRS..., November 23, 2009

By 

Sudheer K. Maharana - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Wrox Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

I know some of the reviewers have been very critical on this book. I assume that they are very advanced Report writers.

I had the 2005 version of this book and found this version of the book to be very helpful. The book covers both administration and programming aspects of SSRS. Honestly speaking, it is very good for reference. I found some chapters have gone too detail in explaining and some chapters are laid out with basic information. I am currently working on a proof of concept project to integrate reporting services with .Net application to render all the reporting type of information via.Net Applications. Chapter 15 gave me a jump start in this along with publishing reports on sharepoint. I am sure SSRS has come a long way to stay in the reporting arena and this book provides very good information for developers in SSRS or who are transitioning to SSRS from other reporting tools.

This book has explained well on installation and configuration of SSRS which provides the report designers and developers, information on the internal architecture of SSRS.