SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services

Announcements

• What's new in November CTP for Reporting Services?

  Robert BrucknerMSFTTuesday, November 10, 2009 8:12 AM

  The November CTP download is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The public download is available here.  A stand-alone MSI for Report Builder 3.0 is available here.  The feature pack download is now also available and includes Report Builder 3.0 as well as the RS add-ins for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010.

  What's new specifically in Reporting Services 2008 R2 November CTP:

  • Report Part Gallery
    The ability for report items / data regions to be published to the report server and made available to other report authors to re-use.  Report authors can publish and share these report components from either BIDS or Report Builder 3.0.  Information workers can use Report Builder to mash these report components together into their own unique views by simple drag & drop.  This includes notifications when a report part was updated on the report server in the meantime. 
     
  • Shared Data Sets
    Datasets can now be shared, stored, processed and cached externally from the report.  Cache refresh plans let you cache reports or shared dataset query results on first use or from a schedule.
     
  • Enhanced SharePoint Integration for SharePoint 2007 and SharePoint 2010
    This includes support for multiple SharePoint Zones, the SharePoint Universal Logging service, and Report Parts.  We added a new SharePoint List data extension with query designer support.  Furthermore, support for right-to-left text with Arabic and Hebrew was added in the SharePoint user interface. 
     
  • New Data Visualization Report Items
    Data Bars - each bar is scaled based on the maximum value of the immediate group (a default which can be adjusted).
    Sparklines are data-intense, word-sized graphics.  These visualizations make it possible for report consumers to quickly see things like trends over time at a glance.
    Indicators are small icons that are often used to depict the status or trend for a given value.  Setting up indicators based on a number of pre-configured sets is now very easy.
    Furthermore, this CTP includes improvements to the Map wizard.
     
  • Enhanced Business Intelligence Development Studio
    Support for 2008 and 2008 R2 versions of reports and report projects.
     
  • Aggregates of Aggregates
    This enables report authors to nest RDL aggregate expressions inside other RDL aggregate expressions with unlimited nesting levels.  For example, the expression =Avg(Sum(Sales, "Month"), "Year") would compute the average total monthly sales.  
     
  • Other RDL Expression Language enhancements
    - Writing expressions that take into account the current rendering format (=Globals!RenderFormat.Name)
    - Naming pages, including naming of Excel worksheets for Excel export
    - Group.DomainScope is quite useful for synchronizing data visually across different charts / sparklines and in tablix even if data is only available at disparate granularities. 
    - Read/Write report variables with automatic serialization/persistence; these are quite useful to avoid managing your own custom code variables.
    - Rotating Text 270 Degrees, which is frequently needed for narrow column layouts. 
    - Dynamic page breaks, as well as resetting page number of page breaks
     
  • New 2010 SOAP Endpoint
    While the existing 2005/2006 SOAP endpoints are still supported, the 2010 endpoint unifies support of both native & SharePoint integrated servers and adds functionality for new areas such as shared datasets, cache refresh plans, and report parts.
     
  • Improved Browser and Standards Mode Support 
     

  Enjoy and please provide feedback in this forum!

• What's new in August CTP for Reporting Services?

  Robert BrucknerMSFTTuesday, August 11, 2009 6:03 PM

  The August CTP download is available for MSDN and TechNet subscribers. The public download is now also active here.

  What’s new in Reporting Services 2008 R2, and already in August CTP:

  • Map and spatial data visualization
    We provided sneak previews of this functionality at past conferences, including a popular “BI Power Hour” demo.  Maps can be very powerful visualizations.  They can consume and visualize geospatial and geometry data directly (as shown by Ed Katibah here), “regular” data, and combine multiple datasets using map layers.  Maps can integrate ESRI shape files, as well as directly integrate with Bing Maps.  
    
     
  • Report Builder 3.0
    The most notable new Report Builder feature area already available in the August CTP is the so-called "server mode": 
    - An edit session concept enables support for embedded data source credentials, relative references, and subreport references when connected to a report server.
    - Dataset results are cached when connected to a report server, which speeds up making layout changes and previewing the new report.
     
  • ATOM data feeds
    Reports are now also available in the ATOM standard compliant format that can be consumed by Gemini and other tools. 
     
     
  • AJAX Report Viewer
    The August CTP provides a preview of some of the functionality that will be available in the stand-alone report viewer control with the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 release.  You will notice a more fluid navigation experience in August CTP.
     
  • Report Manager
    Report Manager received visual and functional improvements with SharePoint-like interaction and menus.
     
  • RDL Expression Language enhancements
    We added direct geospatial data & function support, as well as three types of Lookup functions (Lookup, LookupSet, MultiLookup).  More about this in upcoming postings.

  On top of that, there are a few more new Reporting Services and RDL features available in August CTP.  More details about new features in August CTP will be covered in upcoming postings over the next months, e.g. on Robert Bruckner's blog.  

  Enjoy and please provide feedback in this forum!

• Report Builder 3.0, November CTP

  Robert BrucknerMSFTFriday, August 14, 2009 4:35 PM
  

  A small stand-alone MSI for Report Builder 3.0, November CTP, is now available for download here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=f78b6b1e-8ccb-407a-bc3e-7955d60e1a6c

  Enjoy and please provide feedback in this forum!

• MS Connect / Reporting Services Feedback & Feature Requests

  Robert BrucknerMSFTThursday, September 10, 2009 4:51 PM
  You can take a look at already existing Reporting Services feedback items created by our user community here:
  http://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/SearchResults.aspx?SearchQuery=reporting+services
  
  You can sort by average rating, cast your vote for existing items, or create new requests for issues and feature wishes.