Microsoft® SQL Server™ 2005 Reporting Services Step by Step

Chapter 4. Developing Basic Reports

After completing this chapter, you will be able to:

• Add a new report to a project.

• Define data for a report.

• Add a table to a report.

• Add sorting to a table.

• Group data in a table.

• Add items to a report.

• Edit properties of report items.

This chapter shows you how to use the Report Designer in Microsoft Visual Studio so you can prepare, structure, and format a tabular report. This chapter begins by explaining the output of the authoring stage—a report definition file.

Understanding a Report Definition File

Reporting Services generates a report by using a report definition, which describes the report’s data, layout, and properties. Rather than build a report using a programming language to create a series of instructions, ...