Session 5 : Knowing your development Environment (BIDS) AnandFriday, December 19, 2014 1 comments

Session 5 : Knowing your development Environment (BIDS)

Alright, now we have published our first simple SSRS report using the Reporting Wizard. We deployed the report, and viewed it via a web browser. Next, we will understand, how to develop reports, without the custom report creation wizard. This will give much better control, over developing custom reports. (Eg. you need to add custom calculations, embed maps etc.

When you fire up, Microsoft Business Intelligence Development studio - it looks like this.

The Left side portion, is where you set up your data connections, what parameters your report should use, the queries, that return data for your report etc.

The middle portion, is where you actually develop the report. Eg. Setup tabular reports, matrix reports or embed maps, graphics etc

The Right side portion, is called the solution explorer. It lists down all reports (also called RDL's or report definition language) to be displayed. Report definition languages are pure XML file.

Pressing control+Alt+X brings up the toolbox.

Here you see a number of tools, that aid you in your report development. You simply need to drag and drop the tools, that you need in your report, and then configure it accordingly.
We will  have a look at some of them in the coming lessons.