Visual Studio Haves Versus Have Nots

At this point, you might be wondering what the difference is between Visual Studio and Business Intelligence Developer Studio. In truth, there is not much difference.

In the first version of SSRS, the only report development tool available was Visual Studio. Many report development shops wanted the ability to use SSRS without having to purchase Visual Studio. In response to this, Microsoft bundled SQL Server Business Intelligence Developer Studio with SSRS 2005. Effectively, SQL Server Business Developer Intelligence Studio is simply a shell of Visual Studio with the ability to develop reports . In fact, throughout the rest of the book, we will use the terms interchangeably.

During the installation, the setup program detects if you have Visual Studio. If you do, the program simply installs the files needed to create reports. If you do not have Visual Studio, setup installs SQL Server Business Intelligence Developer Studio.