Chapter 5. Report Designer

Report Designer is a report authoring tool hosted in Visual Studio. Report Designer lets you create simple and complex reports from stock and custom reporting elements. You use Report Designer to select the data source, define the query, arrange the layout of data and graphical elements, define interactive functionality, and preview the report during the development phase. Once you are satisfied, you use Report Designer to publish the report to a report server for end-user access.

NOTE

Report Wizard is a tool that steps you through creating a report. Report Wizard helps you specify the report data and create a tabular or matrix report. Report Wizard is easy to use and is not discussed in this bookall Report Designer examples in this book start with empty projects based on the Report Server template. For more information about Report Wizard, see SQL Server Books Online.

In the following subsections, you will create and publish a tabular report based on the AdventureWorks database. This involves creating a report project using Business Intelligence Development Studio, creating the query and layout for the report, and publishing the report to the report server.