Tutorial: Adding Parameters to a Basic Tabular Report

Article
12/03/2008

New: 17 July 2006

Parameters are variables defined in a report. They are used to filter data, control its appearance, and connect to related reports. Reports have two kinds of parameters: query parameters and report parameters. For more information about parameters, see Working with Parameters in Reporting Services.

This tutorial is designed to help you explore how parameters can be used to control content and appearance in a basic tabular report.

What You Will Learn

In this tutorial, you will add parameters to the report you created in the previous tutorial, Creating a Basic Report. You will first add two query parameters for begin date and end date to filter data your dataset and you will create a report parameter to filter data after it has been retrieved from the data source.

Next, you will add a valid values list that presents the report reader with a list of available values for a single value parameter. Then, you will add a valid values list that presents the report reader with a list of available values for a multivalue parameter. You will also work with multivalue parameters from expressions.

Parameters are used to control whether data is visible in a report, so you will add a Boolean parameter to hide table columns and detail rows by setting the value of the Hidden property to a conditional expression based on the parameter value.

Parameters are also used to access drillthrough, linked, and subreports. In the last lesson, you will pass parameters to a drillthrough report from the main report and define an internal parameter to control the text link color.

For more information about advanced parameter functionality, see Tutorial: Advanced Features Using Parameters.

Requirements

To use this tutorial, your system must have the following installed:

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services with the AdventureWorks sample reports.

Note

The samples are not installed automatically during setup, but you can install them at any time. For information about installing the samples, see Installing Samples.

Note

To complete this tutorial, you must be running Reporting Services in native mode. If you are running Reporting Services in SharePoint integrated mode, the steps that use report server URLs will not work. For more information about Reporting Services modes, see Deployment Modes for Reporting Services. For more information about deploying projects, see Deploying Reports, Models, and Shared Data Sources to a SharePoint Site.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence Development Studio.

Note

Business Intelligence (BI) Development Studio is not supported on Itanium-based computers. However, support for BI Development Studio is available for x64-based computers. If the SQL Server sample databases have been deployed on an Itanium-based computer, use BI Development Studio on either an x86-based or x64-based computer to modify and run the samples.
Microsoft SQL Server 2005 with the AdventureWorks sample database.

In addition, you must have the following permissions:

To deploy and publish a report, you need to be assigned to the Content Manager or Publisher role.
To retrieve data from the AdventureWorks database.

This tutorial requires that you have completed the previous tutorial, Adding Grouping, Sorting, and Formatting to a Basic Report.

Estimated time to complete this tutorial: 1 hours