Chapter 9. Accessing Data

In This Chapter

• Data-Processing Extensions

• Types of Data Sources

• Connection Strings

• Querying Data

• Adding a Data Source

Chapters 9 and 10 look more closely at data sets, and takes a look at report parameters. The combination of these two items helps to add incredible flexibility to SSRS.

Parameters are values you can pass into the report to help make rendering decisions at runtime. Users can get prompted to input parameters at runtime. In combination with data sets, you can draw a list of valid values from your data sources. You can even make parameters dependent on each other in such a way that the lists of values for Parameter B are derived as a function of Parameter A .

As you have already seen, data sets contain the data that reports use, and they are critical to report processing. Data sets contain data sources that are pointers to the actual data store. They also contain the query that the data source will process. The end result of this is a list of fields that result from the processing of the query. To this, you can add your own calculated fields and apply filters. The result of this is a single set of rows and columns that is used in processing the report, or as a list of parameter values.