Microsoft® SQL Server® Reporting Services Recipes: for Designing Expert Reports

Part VIII. Custom and Dynamic Data Sources

• Using a Web Service as a Data Source

• Reporting on SharePoint List Data

• Dynamics AX Report Wizard

USING A WEB SERVICE AS A DATA SOURCE

A great strength of Reporting Services is its ability to report on various kinds of information from many different types of data sources. The most common of these utilize databases of information such as SQL Server, Oracle, and Excel, among others, and are typically accessed through native interfaces or common standards such as ODBC and OLE DB.

However, it is not always possible or desirable to access the underlying database of a system or application. Over the years, a common method for transferring information across systems has emerged: Extensible Markup Language (XML). XML provides a mechanism of describing and encoding data and is generally used as a means to transfer information across heterogeneous systems, often over the Internet.

Beginning with SQL Server 2005, Reporting Services includes a built-in data processing extension for working with XML data. This XML Data Provider enables access to a wide variety of XML data sources such as XML documents, XML over HTTP, and XML web services. This recipe demonstrates how to use the XML data provider to access and report on information from a SOAP-based web service.

Product Versions

• Reporting Services 2005

• Reporting Services 2008

The examples demonstrated in this recipe are based on Reporting Services 2008 but this technique will work in Reporting Services 2005 as ...