Reporting Services Updated for SQL Server 2005

A new end-user reporting feature and other incremental updates in Reporting Services, SQL Server’s managed reporting platform, could encourage upgrades to SQL Server 2005. The new end-user feature, called Report Builder, is based on technology acquired from ActiveViews in Apr. 2004 and allows users without programming skills to construct, format, and publish ad hoc reports. However, the new feature works only with SQL Server data sources and eats into ISV opportunities to supplement Reporting Services with add-ons-for example, Microsoft partner Cizer offers a suite of tools with features similar to Report Builder.

What Is Reporting Services?

First introduced as an add-in for SQL Server 2000 in Jan. 2004, Reporting Services is a collection of development tools and programming interfaces, run-time services, and management utilities used to define, generate, store, and manage reports. Although Reporting Services is part of SQL Server, it can be used to build reports from other databases, such as Oracle. (For more information about the advantages of server-based managed reporting, see the sidebar “Why Organizations Use Managed Reporting“.)