Overview (Reporting Services)
People use reports to communicate information, make decisions, and identify opportunities. SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based reporting platform that provides a full range of ready-to-use tools and services to help people throughout your organization create, deploy, manage, and use reports quickly and easily. With SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS), you can retrieve data from relational, multidimensional, and XML-based data sources; publish reports that can be viewed in various formats; and centrally manage report security and subscriptions. The reports that you create can be viewed over a Web-based connection or as part of a Microsoft Windows application or SharePoint site.
Although Reporting Services integrates with other Microsoft technologies out-of-the-box, developers and third-party vendors can build components to support additional report output formats, delivery formats, authentication models, and data source types. The development and run-time architecture was purposely created in a modular design to support third-party extension and integration opportunities.
In This Section
Report Lifecycle: Creating, Managing, and Delivering Reports
Provides a high-level description of the report authoring, management, and delivery lifecycle used in SQL Server Reporting Services.Reporting Services Features
Summarizes Reporting Services features by category.Reporting Services Scenarios
Explains the ways in which you can use Reporting Services, including integration with SharePoint products and technologies. This section also contains information about using the ReportViewer controls in Visual Studio and extending Reporting Services functionality in custom applications.Reporting Services Concepts
Describes important Reporting Services terms and concepts.Reporting Services Components and Tools
Describes the components and tools in Reporting Services.