Microsoft® SQL Server™ Reporting Services includes Report Designer, a complete report authoring tool that is hosted within the Microsoft Visual Studio® environment. To build a report in Report Designer, you create the report, add data, and arrange the layout of the data and graphical elements. You can also add interactive features to your report and manipulate the output by using expressions. When the report is complete, you can use Report Designer to preview the report and publish it directly to the report server.
When you create a report using Report Designer or another tool, you are actually creating a report definition. A report definition contains information about the data source, the structure of the data, and the layout of the data and objects on the report. A report definition is stored as a Report Definition Language (RDL) file within a report project, which is included in a Visual Studio .NET solution.
This section describes how to use Report Designer to create reports. However, you can create a report in any application that can generate RDL files. For more information, see Report Definition Language.
The following table describes the topics in this section.
|Ways to Create a Report||Discusses methods for creating reports.|
|Defining Report Data||Describes how to add data to your report and work with data in the report.|
|Defining Report Appearance||Describes how to arrange data and graphical elements on the report.|
|Adding Interactive Features||Discusses how to add interactive components to your report.|
|Using Expressions||Describes how to manipulate report output by using expressions and includes information about summarizing data and using formulas.|
|Debugging and Publishing Reports||Describes how to debug your report and publish it to a report server.|
To use Report Designer, you must first install it using Reporting Services setup. Report Designer requires Visual Studio .NET 2003. For more information, see Installing Reporting Services.