Working with the Report Builder

The Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 tool can be installed from a standalone installer available at this Microsoft site, ReportBuilder.msi The same file is also available from a collection of download files when you access the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack, October 2008 at Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack 2008.

Report Builder 2.0 is feature-rich reporting tool with the latest Microsoft Office look and feel. It provides an extremely flexible GUI with user friendly wizards for creating the Tablix data regions, a versatile construct that includes tables, matrix, and charts and gauges. Report Builder 2.0 supports server resources such as shared Data Sources, works with SQL Server Data Sources and many third party products, and can directly open and edit server hosted reports. Report Builder together with Report Manager provides powerful support for building and managing a bewildering array of report types.

Report Builder overview

In the present version of SQL Server 2008 [Enterprise Evaluation edition] there are two Report Builders available. Report Builder 1.0, which has remained as a program that can be launched from the Report Manager, and the new Report Builder 2.0, which is a stand alone report authoring tool that needs to be independently launched.

Although Report Builder 1.0 can access Report Models built with Visual Studio 2008 and the Report Manager, it cannot be used to create reports using those models. It also does not work with Reports generated by Visual Studio 2008 / BIDS / Report Builder 2.0. The errors can be summarized as follows:

• When you try to access the Report Server 2008 from the link provided on the Report Builder 1.0 interface you get the following error message:
  Specifying credentials in a URL is not supported
• When you try to open a report created using VS2008/BIDS/Report Builder2.0 using the Open Report...; and Open File...; navigational items in Report Builder 1.0 you get the following error message:
  System.IO.StreamReader: The Report element was not found.
• Report Builder 1.0 allows you to access Report Models created with VS2008/BIDS/Report Manager and even allows you create a report in design view but this report cannot be processed on the Report Server. If you try to do so, you get the following error message:
  MemoryStream length must be non-negative and less than 2^31 - 1 - origin. Parameter name: offset; Remote GDI stream version: ?. Expected version: 11.0.1.

In this chapter the Report Builder 2.0 interface will be described along with the new features that are incorporated into this version. Report Builder 2.0 is admirably suited to address all items in the Report Definition Language of 2008. The Hands-on exercise 6.1 describes enabling My Reports, which allows each user to save his reports in his own folder helping the author to make his reports available after verifying that the report meets all the requirements. Hands-on exercise 6.2 describes how you can take an existing report authored with Report Builder 2.0 or otherwise (VS2008) and modify its formatting and other features using Report Builder 2.0. Hands-on exercise 6.3 shows how you may create a report from scratch and embellish with charts and gauges.

One of the important features of Report Builder 2.0 is the empowerment it provides business users to create ad hoc reports using the Report Models built on the databases they use. Building these models was discussed in Chapters 3 and 5. In the next chapter, you will be creating ad hoc reports based on the models you created earlier using Report Builder.

In this chapter, you will be learning mostly about the Report Builder 2.0 interface details and working with it to create reports or modify them. It may be noted that Report Builder generates 2008 compliant RDL files as described in RDL Spec 08 pdf file and therefore, cannot work with reports generated using 2005 technology.