Get up to speed quickly on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services

At long last developers and database administrators have a server-based reporting solution from Microsoft built from the ground up, almost completely but not entirely in .NET managed code. Reporting Services enables extremely straightforward centrally managed, rapidly developed, easily extended, scaleable, secure, fixed as well as interactive, proactive as well as passive, database reporting to a variety of output formats - over the Internet, corporate intranet or e-mail - from any database or data source, not just SQL Server, whose learning curve is hardly a curve it’s practically flat.

Reporting Services is included with the SQL Server Standard or better license for no additional cost.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services

This book takes up where the Microsoft documentation leaves off by mapping out detailed information about security and the inner-workings of Reporting Services. It also features extensive coverage of the Visual Studio .NET 2003 add-in used to create and deploy reports. Written to be an invaluable and comprehensive reference on Reporting Services to help developers, database administrators and IT managers this book walks through every aspect of report installation, management, security, creation and programming.

Peter and Bill began working closely with the Microsoft Development Team while Reporting Services was under early development and the final book is a culmination of all their knowledge learnt as the product matured to the commercially available version—it will be well worth the short wait for this definitive work.

Peter Blackburn and William Vaughn redefine the concept of what a technical book should provide

The book includes a DVD that illustrates many complex aspects of Reporting Services as well as containing a wealth of code and report samples. All the code and samples are based and tested on the final version of the software which you would be using.

The DVD also has examples and narrated demonstrations on video clips that not only explain, but show the reader how to navigate safely through some of the more difficult and confusing parts of the technology. This is truly a work that takes the reader far and beyond the official Microsoft documentation. While focused on security, Peter and Bill lead the reader through topics that range from how to securely install Reporting Services, through virtually every facet of creating and deploying reports. They also show any number of clever and insightful techniques that enable the reader to create report templates, report style sheets, and show what’s needed to securely extend Reporting Services. They even explain that “holy grail”--how to extend the Report Manager to support your own prettified User Interface for custom parameter collection within the Report Manager itself.