Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
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SQL Server Reporting Services is the customizable reporting solution for report designers and programmers. This hands-on guide will get you up to speed quickly so you can design, deploy, manage, and even customize reporting solutions. You can create powerful reports without programming knowledge and extend reporting solutions using VB, C#, and ASP.NET.
Packed with detailed examples of building reports, designing report solutions, and developing deployment strategies for interacting with various platforms, this book prepares you to take full advantage of this revolutionary tool. Plus, you'll learn how to extend practically every feature of Reporting Services by implementing your own security architecture or adding custom data access. What you will learn from this book
Who this book is for This book is for report designers, developers, administrators, and business professionals interested in learning the advanced functionality, report server administration, and security issues of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real-world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job. |
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| 04-10-08 | 2 | (NA) |
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The reason for being so confusing is this book was written by so many authors, thereby the ideas presented are not coherent. This is not a learner's book, and if you're looking for one I suggest you buy Brian Larson's instead - great book, easy to follow and the author will patiently answer your inquiries regarding some minor problems.
I bought this book yesterday hoping I could supplement the things I've already learned previously regarding RS, but no, I'll return this book today and ask for a refund. (Review Data Last Updated: 2008-08-27 05:08:52 EST)
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| 12-29-07 | 1 | 3\3 |
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Almost impossible to do the walkthroughs as the writers can't decide if they are giving you instructions or just offering some general concepts. Chapters 1-3 are a waste of time. Go straight to chapter 4 to get started.
The format is too conversational and often fluffed-out with irrelevant details. Overall, another disappointing Wrox text that has too many authors and no editor. (Review Data Last Updated: 2008-04-10 20:41:33 EST)
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| 08-09-07 | 3 | (NA) |
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This book is about average. With that I am not implying that it is a bad book but rather that you could find the same information on the Internet just by googling a little bit. I guess I was expecting to find something really clever in it, something that it would make it more useful that simple internet articles. Again, not a bad book but also not one that will make the difference.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-12-30 08:56:04 EST)
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| 04-13-07 | 2 | 2\3 |
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This will probably be an ok reference for some things in ssrs, but otherwise it has been a real pain to get through. There seems to be a huge amount of repetitive informatin in the first three chapters before we actually get to start writing reports.
Unfortunately, once writing reports, it seems like the authors have ADD. They start talking about a walk through exercise but never actually have the walk through. They do have a couple of exercises where they show you how to go step by step, but these are not explained well. I think the writing, other than being repetative, is sometimes unecessarily chatty, but at other times way to terse for beginners. I have managed to glean some value from the book, but it's been tough. I would definitely recommend if you haven't touched SSRS yet to go through the tutorials on MSDN first. They do a better job of introducing you to basics, giving you plain instructions, and not overloading you with commentary that isn't all helpful in just getting you up to speed on how to create reports. Luckily I did this before I bought the book. I think if I was completely new to reporting and SSRS, I would have thrown this book down in disgust after the first 100 pages or so... (Review Data Last Updated: 2007-08-09 08:46:17 EST)
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| 04-10-07 | 2 | 2\3 |
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This is the fifth book that I have purchased from Wiley Publishing (WROX), and I must say that I have been very pleased so far by the overall quality of the publications until now. I read through the other four and still use each one of them as a relevant reference source.
I am half way thru this book and the experience has not been pleasant to say the least. The inconsistencies between the text, figure's and examples are to numerous to be overlooked. And, to be honest, this is one of the most confusing approaches that I have come across in quite some time. He is obvious very knowledge about SSRS, but during many of his explanations he orphans the examples or doesn't tie what he is explaining back to the example. This makes it very difficult to reproduce in the actual development environment. You're just left confused! I am a twelve year veteran of Crystal Reports, Application Development and Database Design and I find this book very difficult to follow. So unfortunately, I would not recommend this particular book to others ... I am just surprisingly disappointed. (Review Data Last Updated: 2007-06-27 16:47:24 EST)
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| 04-09-07 | 2 | (NA) |
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This is the fifth book that I have purchased from Wiley Publishing (WROX), and I must say that I have been very pleased so far by the overall quality of the publications until now. I read through the other four and still use each one of them as a relevant reference source.
I am half way thru this book and the experience has not been pleasant to say the least. The inconsistencies between the text, figure's and examples are to numerous to be overlooked. And, to be honest, this is one of the most confusing approaches that I have come across in quite some time. He is obvious very knowledge about SSRS, but during many of his explanations he orphans the examples or doesn't tie what he is explaining back to the example. This makes it very difficult to reproduce in the actual development environment. You're just left confused! I am a twelve year veteran of Crystal Reports, Application Development and Database Design and I find this book very difficult to follow. So unfortunately, I would not recommend this particular book to others ... I am just surprisingly disappointed. (Review Data Last Updated: 2007-04-11 12:01:43 EST)
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| 01-12-07 | 3 | 3\5 |
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For me, this book is "somewhat useful" because there are not a lot of publications out there on this subject. But because I needed to "hit the ground running" and start producing reports with certain functionality right away, I've found it difficult to locate the precise information I need to accomplish a particular task. On the other hand, it appears to describe the application ad naseum, so for someone with lots of time to immerse themselves, it might be the right book.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-06-27 16:47:24 EST)
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| 01-11-07 | 3 | 3\5 |
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For me, this book is "somewhat useful" because there are not a lot of publications out there on this subject. But because I needed to "hit the ground running" and start producing reports with certain functionality right away, I've found it difficult to locate the precise information I need to accomplish a particular task. On the other hand, it appears to describe the application ad naseum, so for someone with lots of time to immerse themselves, it might be the right book.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-04-09 21:50:34 EST)
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| 12-15-06 | 3 | 1\4 |
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For me most of the good stuff was toward the end. If you're new and inexperienced this might be a good buy. Otherwise I'm not so sure.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-06-27 16:47:24 EST)
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| 11-15-06 | 4 | 1\5 |
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This book is an essential guide to have on your hands when you need to work with SQL Server Reporting Services. The book covers all the essential topics, from the basic aspects to the advanced customization and report creation.
The book is well written and all the informations are easy to find. recommended! (Review Data Last Updated: 2007-06-24 16:44:59 EST)
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| 11-14-06 | 4 | 0\1 |
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This book is an essential guide to have on your hands when you need to work with SQL Server Reporting Services. The book covers all the essential topics, from the basic aspects to the advanced customization and report creation.
The book is well written and all the informations are easy to find. recommended! (Review Data Last Updated: 2007-01-11 01:49:56 EST)
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| 11-11-06 | 2 | 8\10 |
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The first few chapters I have read of this book have been so disappointing that I'm back at Amazon looking to buy another, different book. I have some previous experience with Reporting Services so I bought a `Pro' book and jumped straight into Chapter 12 and 13 looking for the real meaty information I needed. Unfortunately this book is for beginners. The book is poorly edited - with examples containing numerous incorrect URL's and parameter names, there are pieces of information given that are just plain wrong, and most of the code examples are trivial, wasting a real pro's time - like how to populate a combobox with items or access a querystring parameter.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-06-27 16:47:24 EST)
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| 11-03-06 | 3 | 4\4 |
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This book does a good job of covering how to create, format, and deploy a report. But, like most books, it doesn't do a good job of talking about what to do if something doesn't work. In particular, it glosses over the security aspects of running Reporting Services. RS uses Active Directory, if you have AD installed. but the book doesn't mention AD and how the two products work together. I found that I had to use a SQL Server userid and password instead of NT security in order to get a deployed report to work. The issue has to do with the 'double hop' problem. You can get more info in the Q319723 article on Microsoft's Knowledge Base.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-01-11 01:49:56 EST)
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| 08-07-06 | 5 | 6\10 |
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I used Reporting Services since its first release. Have a couple of books on RS 2000 but this one is the first I bought on SSRS. Great book for everyone, detailed, easy to read, deep and rich in examples. Something very valuable is the complete code online available to everyone to download. I can conclude that this book is a must for someone who's starting with SSRS or wants to enhance the knowledge. It's a must in every bookshelf.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-01-11 01:49:56 EST)
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| 06-29-06 | 5 | 4\10 |
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This book is an excellent way to begin understanding this technology Microsoft released. Step by step explains the most important concepts about SSRS with tips and recomendations to do the things better. You can buy this book without any problem.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2007-01-11 01:49:56 EST)
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| 05-07-06 | 5 | 3\6 |
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I have read all the SRS2005 books out there so far. This is one of the best. Very well done.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-07 12:56:31 EST)
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| 04-03-06 | 3 | 0\1 |
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I like Wrox books in general and this book has helped me learned SQL Reporting Services (I had no prior knowledge of SRS). I did find some errors in their examples that wasted valuable time for me. MAKE SURE you check out Wrox's errata page for this book before working through the examples: [...]. The numerous typos detract from the professional feel of the book. Until a second edition comes out you may want to consider "Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services".
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 03-29-06 | 5 | 4\4 |
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Till today I never found a good book in SQL Server Reporting Services. This book covers a lot of features, to get you ready to work on Complex Reports. Very good step by step instructions with working examples. It starts from a beginner level and proceeds with Advanced Report Design.The best part I liked was the explanation about Rendering reports using .NET code, .NET IO namespace classes, and URL rendering deployment strategies to handle hardware, software, and platform considerations, licensing issues, and scaling options.
I highly recomend this as a very important source to learn Reporting Services (Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-07 12:56:31 EST)
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| 03-23-06 | 5 | 6\7 |
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Virtually all the information that a company has is maintained in databases. This includes information from vatious department such as personnel, sales, manufacturing, all of which needs to be pulled together into intelligible reports if they are to be of any use to management.
In the past Microsoft had SQL Server as a pretty fair database. Certainly compteitive with Oracle and IBM's DB2. But all the database did was take in and give back data. It was up to you to take that data and put it into a report form if you wanted to have other people make sense out of it. Microsoft seems to have developed a philosophy of extending the SQL Server package to incorporate a bunch of new features. Reporting Services is one of these. Basically Reporting Services takes the raw data out of the database and presents it in a more understandable format, being a report, a chart or whatever. The book is what you would expect. It is a complete guide to using Reporting Services from its installation to tieing the database to the web, security aspects, and everything else there is to know about the product. I rate this as a bit above the beginner level. It assumes a bit of background in SQL Server, it assumes that you have a system set up with SQL SErver and Reporting Services running. From there it talks about making reports and then making reports better shaped, styled, and useful to the user. You need to know a bit about SQL. There's a couple of appendicies on SQL, but having some background knowledge about SQL would make your understanding a lot better. (Review Data Last Updated: 2006-07-07 12:56:31 EST)
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| 12-02-04 | 5 | 12\12 |
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I have looked over a number of books about SQL Server Reporting Services (RS), and after comparing them decided that this one is best for my needs.
The book starts with a clear overview of just what RS is, what its components are, and how they work together. This seems to be the part that many other books just miss. Other books seem to get caught up in the hype but fail to deliver a direct, no-frills or buzzwords, account of the actual architecture. I also like that the books assumes that the reader already knows SQL, .NET programming (although you don't have to be a professional to understand their examples), and SQL Server. This enables them to avoid repeating material which is better covered on other books, and allows them to focus on explaining just what Reporting Services can do, and lets the reader get started using RS right away. My one beef is that their code examples are in both VB.NET and C#, which takes up unnecessary space in the text. But that's a minor complaint when they otherwise do a great job explaining this fascinating and powerful product. (Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 11-11-04 | 3 | 6\9 |
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With this book you will be able to set up and run Reporting Services, however, if you are looking for something that details advanced report design (e.g. anything more than simply bound table data) then this is not the book for you. In fact I don't know what would be the book for you. I'm still looking.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 11-03-04 | 5 | 6\7 |
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This book does an excellent, thorough job of introducing the product (which is awesome!), and then going all the way through to advanced coding & custom manipulation. The authors have clearly presented the material in a comfortable style, while remaining seriously technical. As a consultant, seminar presenter, and MS2030 trainer, I use this book extensively as a reference as well as a recomendation. My background includes over 10 years of varied development, & reporting.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 10-29-04 | 2 | 6\13 |
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The amount of errors in this book is pathetic... obviously the pressures of publishing early is as great as the pressure to release software before it's ready.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 09-29-04 | 4 | 8\9 |
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With any SQL Server database, once you've populated it and it has undergone real events (esp. transactions), then you'll need to summarise and display the results. Most likely, on a periodic basis. Plus, the report might be for a nontechnical audience. (Your boss?) So the book offers an efficient investment of your time. It shows straightforward ways to get at the data and how to present it.
While the authors try to minimise it, there is still a modicum of coding. They provide example snippets in C# and VB.NET. If you're already familiar with either language, then there will be nothing complicated in the code for you. The book also demonstrates how Microsoft is migrating .NET into a seamless integration with its flagship database. The book is suitable for an intermediate level programmer in C# or VB.NET. It also helps to have some experience in the visuals of laying out a report. For example, an HTML UI or PowerPoint background would not be amiss. (Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 08-10-04 | 4 | 33\39 |
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There are 2 RS (Reporting Services) books out right now, this one, and Brian Larson's book. Larson's book is good if you are a newbie to RS, but the examples he uses are very minimal.
How to Choose: 1. If you're a solid SQL Server user and are comfortable setting up RS and have a little C# or VB.NET experience; go with this book. 2. If you're moderately clueless but really want to learn; use Larson's book "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services," {and maybe pick-up Murach's C# (.Net Developer)} You may have to do what I did and go through both RS books. I started out clueless and the WROX book would have been too much to start with. Larson's book was a good starter for me, "an advanced newbie" but left me wanting much more. This review will eventually be out of date, but I think I'll stand by the WROX book (though it has errors). Larson's book is going to get beat out as the entry level book pretty quickly. (as soon as someone publishes another one) WARNING: If you have never installed SQL Server, this is not the place to start. Reporting Services is not Word. It takes a moderate level of Server knowledge to even get started. (Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-13 16:20:42 EST)
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| 07-03-04 | 4 | 9\10 |
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I just got started using Reporting Services and was completely lost using the BOL. This book really helped me understand how to get started and to write some more advanced reports. Some of the screen pictures were a little out of date (apparently taken from the beta version) but this was not a big deal. The errata info at the Wrox forums was also very helpful and I was able to get answers from the authors on the P2P forum. In all, I'm happy I bought the book. Good job.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-05-06 12:58:06 EST)
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| 06-17-04 | 1 | 12\23 |
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The architecture overviews are good, but from there on it's full of errors and lacking the detail needed to make it useful. It has what you could loosely call "excercises" that I've gone through (step-by-step) and found many errors with. Errors that require many hours of debugging and fixing on the part of the reader. The writing is very cursory, overly broad and not detailed enough to be useful. The book often mentions that something useful CAN be done with Report Services but doesn't explain HOW to do it. Perhaps a revised edition is in order. One with more detail and with walkthroughs that have been followed, tested and confirmed accurate.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-04-03 12:36:01 EST)
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| 06-03-04 | 1 | 11\29 |
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I have never wrote a review online here at amazon, but this book was such a disappointment that i decided to tell people about it. Basically this is an extension of "The Rational Guide to: SQL Server Reporting Services" by Anthony T. Mann, book with lots of screen shots. It does have a few simple excersises but thats about it. For example on pages 80-81 of the book in the grooping section it reads: "Tabular or matrix data may be sorted and grouped on one or multiple levels" then there is a nice screen shot of grouped design, it does not tell you how to do it. Then a few paragraphs later after the another screen shot it reads: "In this design for this report, there are four list controls placed inside one another. Grouping have been created for each of the lists to organize them into hierarchy" It says nothing about designing such a thing. Basically the book lacks hands on excersises. I found it totally useless.
(Review Data Last Updated: 2006-03-29 13:13:36 EST)
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