Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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.

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.

Even though I got this book, together with its sister books of SSIS and SSAS, from Amazon at a drastically reduced price, the book came with a big disappointment.

Two things that bother me the most are:

1. Lack of solid examples. Whatever the book has also appear to be disorganized. It's not easy to follow.
2. The code downloaded from the wrox website doesn't even work on BIDS 2008...and the download site appears to be "unorganized."

If you are looking for a SSIS book, I strongly recommend other books besides this one...unless you can't find a better book (which I doubt it), then you can buy this one...and don't pay the full price for it. :)

The book gives good high level information about the product, but the step-by-step examples are very poor. I guess they had to rush this out because the examples are poorly written, but if you follow a simple example you get different results from what you're supposed to be seeing. Really frustrating.

Good thing Amazon sells at a discount.

I am in a reporting services class that uses this book. The poorly written examples, downloads that don't match the examples in the book, and the confusing instructions has made it difficult to actually learn anything. Far too much time is wasted attempting to reconcile the inconsistencies between the text, the examples and the downloads. Very frustrating.