Customer Reviews

Pro SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (Books for Professionals by Professionals)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

Let me start by saying, anyone who gives the book higher than 1 star rating is either profiting from the sale of this book or didn't actually read it.

It's obvious that the instructions were either written for a previous version of SSRS or a 2008 pre-release.

The instructions have way too many discrepancies with reality!!! "Right click this and then select that..." Well, "that" doesn't exist. This issue happens all throughout the book and it's extremely frustrating.

Everyone deserves a refund! Buying this book is a waste of your money.

I have the 2005 version of this book I purchased several years ago but ended up not being able to look at it. I opened it up a couple of weeks ago and realized I might as well start on 2008 since that's the platform I predominantly use and the 2005 didn't synch up well with the 2008 interface.

So I ordered this book. First it's the same book with an attempt to go in and edit where necessary where there were changes in 2008. So with that I'm kind of miffed I paid $39.99 for the same book I already have with minor changes.

To make matters worse, this must have been edited during the beta because I'm through chapter 3 right now and the start versions of the reports I've yet to find one that works by just following what's in the book.

Things such as right click to open up properties of a row group is incorrect, you must also select group properties. They tell you to go to the layout tab but it's called the Design tab in 08. These couple of things are minor but it tells me this book was hastily done without much attention to detail and in my opinion doesn't warrant it's cost. Also, how about an upgrade price for persons who purchased the first one?

The group on's don't work like mentioned in the book in most cases following the procedures in the order presented in the book.

Bottom line, for me to make a purchase such as this, I do it so I don't have to hassle with tinkering. To me this is a book in the category of do what I mean versus what I say. Again, for my purpose of spending $40 on a book, it totally defeats the purpose of the purchase if I have to fill in blanks to get things to work.

If I want to waste the time doing that I'll go on line and just use the documenation.

The download also contains a start version and an working version. It's starting to become clear that the RDL definitions from previous versions will work but trying to follow the instructions of making the start.rdl's work clearly don't work.

Take image.rdl versus's Image Start.rdl. Image.RDL is in a Tablix but Image Start.RDL is not so the fields in it aren't bound.

I had to play around for 30 minutes of manipulating to figure out a way to get it to work. Again, complete waste of money if you look for books that you appear to be as close to error free so you can learn and then use as a reference.

Wait for a book that written from scratch on the RTM of BI 2008 tools.

Note: I submitted errata for this book last week and still haven't heard a response so I'm checking into the hassle of trying to return this and get my money back.

I've used over a hundred technical books and this is easily one of the most confusing and incomplete ones that I have ever used. Frequently you will find yourself trying to reverse engineer the source code samples because the instructions in the book are missing a variety of key steps that need to be done in order to follow along. I recommend looking for another book if you need help with SSRS.

As other reviewers have pointed out, the instructions are for a previous version. They don't work. They reference items that don't even exist. Menu options that don't exist. Objects that don't exist. What a nightmare. A total waste of money. This book obviously went through NO quality control whatsoever. They should have seen that the instructions failed on every example.

This is the most frustrating experience I had with a technical , "hands-on" book, ever! This book was clearly written for a previous version on SSRS and it seems the authors changed the "2005" on the tittle to "2008". I can not imagine "Pro's" will do such a cheap trick for money. There are countless cases in this book where you will be instructed to right click and select an option, the problem is, that option does not really exist in SSRS 2008, because this book was written for SSRS 2005! Please do not waste your money on this book, and shame on the authors for trying to make money by making quick "search and replace" edits on the SSRS 2005 book and sell it as SSRS 2008.

Regretfully, I totally concur with everyting in the review titled "Don't waste your money". The most frustrating thing to me is that the authors seem to know what they are talking about. They just didn't update the book well at all. Lots of references to things that don't exist and the sample files are in disarray. Either the authors are too lazy or the publisher doesn't care about quality. I too submitted errata and was shocked that none was posted before me. This book has many errors and poorly written sentences to boot.

Recently started to look at reporting services, the first 2 chapters around the architecture were fairly clear and concise.

I started on Chapter 3 where the problems started, working through the demo's I found the instructions gave you a very different result from the screenshots, I then started to compare the tutorials with the code samples which were different as well.

I feel really bad giving this 1 star but the material left me frustrated as I continually repeated the instructions in case I had missed any steps to the point where I started to question myself, looking at the other reviews it seems that I wasn't alone and other people had the same problems!

I take owenership, both good and bad, for this book as its primary author. I appreciate the great feedback I have received for the series of books on Reporting Services. I know that though we have strived to produce a quality book using real-life examples, sometimes readers have issues with the content, the code, the samples, etc. While many have given high praise of the book, others, like the previous reviews, have had dissenting opinions. It is of course our goal to create quality work as our names are attached to it (believe me it is not for the money) and this book is no different. Please feel free to contact me personally with any issues. As I have done with anyone who has taken the time to contact me I will personally see to it that whatever issues you may be experiencing are resolved be it by a return e-mail or a personal phone call whereby I can also understand the projects you may be working on. My e-mail address is widely dispersed on the Internet or you can contact me via the publisher. Either way, of course I want everyone who purchases this book to have an error-free experience. Most have. I know your time is valuable. Thanks again for the feedback.
Rodney Landrum

The book is well laid out and well written, concise, and fairly easy to understand, provided you have some existing knowlege of sql server. As with most of these books and training material, they're ultimately geared toward the Enterprise edition of sql server. This book is no different, however, there is much that can be learned even by the novice programmer utilizing ways to do reports in sql server, even the Express edition, there's always a way. As with most books I've read and worked through, sometimes you have to do a little digging for the answer, but, it's always there. The knowlege presented by the book is still very much worth learning.

I recently was introduced to this book when I met the author who was speaking at a recent SQL users group I attended. It turned out to be fortuitous as I had just taken a position where writing reports with SSRS was at the top of my task list. The book includes a pre-populated database based on a healthcare application which was also coincidental for me as those were the types of reports I would be writing. I found the samples in the book to be intuitive and build upon one another so that in the end, what started out as a blank report with one or two data sets became a full report. It was a good idea to have the ending report included in the code so tracking back was also possible and fairly easy. I had a couple of questions on how to tie what I was learning into the reports I was writing. I contacted the author directly and he was quick to respond with suggestions. I also like the fact that there is a whole chapter on efficiently designing queries and datasets, critical to any report.

In conclusion I think this book is a great way for anyone to learn about SSRS. I went from knowing nothing of SSRS to being the "Report Guy" at my company all thanks to this book. The great part is even if you already know what you think to be "everything there is to know" about SSRS this book will still help you around some of those hard to find answers and reveal very useful ideas you can implement to make any report more useful and informative. I still find myself referencing the "SSRS Bible" (which sets on my desk at all times) from time to time whenever I need a solution to a problem.

Thanks guys and keep up the great work!