Two Main Report Designers from Microsoft

Microsoft offers two main report designers. The first one is Microsoft SQL Server Report Designer, or simply Report Designer, integrated with Visual Studio. Starting in SQL Server 2005, if you do not have Visual Studio installed, SQL Server setup installs the Visual Studio shell and labels it SQL Server Business Intelligence Developer Studio.

The second report designer is a standalone application called Report Builder. Report Builder is also new for SSRS in 2005. As covered in Chapter 3, "Reporting Services Architecture," Report Builder provides end users the ability to create their own reports knowing little to no SQL.

The largest difference between the two designers is the target audience, and how they access the designer itself. Visual Studio/SQL Server Business Intelligence Developer Studio is targeted at the developer community in general. To enable end-user reporting, the Report Builder is launched within a browser window from the SSRS Report Manager application. Although it is launched over the web, it is a Windows forms application. To use Report Builder, the end user must have access to a report model. The model contains metadata about the report data source, and it must be created using Visual Studio or Business Intelligence Developer Studio.