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Do You Need a Web-based Reporting Solution for your Business?By Andrew Sisson Successful businesses require real time global distribution of information to their clients, partners and suppliers. The ever-increasing need for delivery of real-time reports and information is driving most companies to dynamic web-based solutions. In the effort to provide this capability, companies are faced with considerations such as security, bandwidth, and compatibility of browser technology. Microsoft (News - Alert) SQL Server Reporting Services provides an integrated solution enabling organizations of all sizes to securely transform, distribute, and share critical enterprise data across internal and external Internets at a lower total cost of ownership  .Contrary to many solutions on the market today, Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is an affordable and comprehensive, server-based reporting solution. It shines in its ability to enable organizations with quick creation, deployment, management, and delivery of interactive Web-based reports and traditional paper-oriented reports. As an integrated part of the Microsoft business intelligence framework, Reporting Services combines the data management capabilities of SQL Server and Microsoft Windows Server with familiar and powerful Microsoft Office System applications to deliver real-time information to support daily operations and drive decisions. An Integrated Enterprise Architecture Whether your business currently supports a SQL Server environment or is comprised of numerous other data management solutions, Microsoft Reporting Services supports any data sources enabled with OLE DB and Open Database Connectivity (ODBC). Through these supported data sources Reporting Services works seamlessly with Oracle, SQL Server, Sybase (News - Alert), UDB, and other OLE/ODBC supported data sources, regardless of their location and Operating System. Reports can be created in multiple output formats compatible with multiple Web browsers, MS Office System applications, Adobe PDF, CSV, text, and others. Full Reporting Life Cycle Support SQL Server Reporting Services, supports the full reporting life cycle, including: • Report authoring: Report developers can create reports using the integrated Report Designer included with Reporting Services or any other design tool that supports Report Definition Language (RDL), an XML-based industry standard used to define reports. (Figure 1) • Report delivery: Users can view reports in a Web-based format or in e-mail. • Report management: Managed reports can be executed either on demand or on a specified schedule, and can be cached for consistency and performance. *A new feature in SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services allows administrators to use the Management Studio to organize reports and data sources, schedule report execution and delivery, and track reporting history. • • • Report security: Report Services provides a flexible, role-based security model to protect reports and reporting resources is easy to deploy and manage. Extensible interfaces for integrating other security models are supported as well. Support for SSL certificate through the IIS server seamlessly integrates with the Reporting Services for encryption of connectivity and sensitive data elements. (Figure 2) Strategic Reporting Scenarios SQL Server Reporting Services combines a single, complete reporting platform with an architecture that’s scalable and extensible to meet a variety of reporting needs, including: • Enterprise reporting: Companies and enterprise groups can use Report Services for their operational reporting or business intelligence applications. A variety of reports can be designed based upon specific business needs such as daily, weekly, month, and/or quarterly financial and sales reports and configure them to be deployed to individuals throughout the enterprise. • Ad-hoc reporting: The integrated ad-hoc tool called Report Builder enables users to create their own reports and explore corporate data. Report Builder incorporates a user-friendly business query model that enables users to build reports without deep technical understanding of the underlying data sources. • Embedded reporting: Pre-defined or ad-hoc reports from third-party applications that use Microsoft SQL Server’s Reporting Services can be used ‘as-is’, customized, or generate new ones for your specific business needs. • Web-based reporting for partners, suppliers, and customers: A browser/web based solution can be quickly designed allowing you to deploy interactive Web-based reports to deliver information to a multitude of destinations over extranets, intranets, or the Internet. Reporting Services isolates report consumers from the complexity of the underlying data sources, while providing personalization and interactivity. Author: Andrew Sisson is the managing Partner of iGneiTe, LLC, a Dallas, TX based professional services organization specializing in the OSS process chain for the communications industry. iGneiTe also provides convergent billing consulting and advanced web solutions for internets, extranets, intranets and web portals. Andrew has over 10 years of database experience in Oracle (News - Alert), SQL Server, Sybase, and UDB. He currently travels the world teaching cross database platforms to experienced DBA teams. He can be contacted for further information at [email protected]. http://www.igneite.com |