Implementing and Maintaining SQL 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS)

The course discusses how to use the Reporting Services development tools to create reports, and how to use the Reporting Services management and administrative tools to manage a Reporting Services solution.

Who should attend?

 This course is intended for IT professionals and developers who need to implement reporting solutions by using Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services.

Delegates will be able to

• Describe SQL Server Reporting Services and its components.
• Create a Reporting Services report.
• Enhance a Reporting Services report.
• Create and manipulate data sets.
• Use report models to implement reporting for business users.
• Configure report publishing and execution settings.
• Implement subscriptions for reports.
• Administer Reporting Services.
• Implement custom Reporting Services applications. 

Prerequisites

Experience with these products or areas is strongly recommended

• Exposure to creating reports in Microsoft Access or other third-party reporting products, such as Crystal Reports
• Conceptual understanding of the push and pull distribution/subscription paradigm
• Experience navigating the Microsoft Windows Server environment
• Experience with Windows services (starting and stopping)
• Experience creating service accounts and permissions
• Experience with Microsoft SQL Server, including:
• SQL Server Agent
• SQL Server query language (SELECT, UPDATE, INSERT, and DELETE)
• SQL Server System tables
• SQL Server accounts (users and permissions)

Topics covered

Introduction to Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services

• Reporting services and the reporting life cycle
• Key features of reporting services
• Components of reporting services architecture

Authoring Basic Reports

• Fundamentals of report authoring
• Configuring data sources and sets
• Creating tabular reports
• Summarising data
• Applying basic formatting

Enhancing Basic Reports

• Navigational controls
• Additional types of data regions
• Enhancing a basic report

Manipulating Data Sets

• Dynamically modify the data set
• Parameters in the underlying query
• Best practices for static and dynamic parameter lists
• Alternative data sources
• Interacting with a data set through the use of parameters

Using Report Models

• Creating a report model
• Using the full Report Designer development environment
• Using Report Builder to create a report from the report model

Publishing and Executing Reports

• Publishing reports to the report server and executing them

Using Subscriptions to Distribute Reports

• How to implement subscriptions
• Distributing reports via e-mail or shared folders

Administering Reporting Services

• How to administer Reporting Services
• How to monitor and optimize the performance of the report server
• How to maintain the reporting services database
• How to keep the system secure

Programming Reporting Services

• How to query reporting services information
• How to automate report management tasks
• How to render reports without relying on Report Manager
• How to extend the feature set of a report server