Professional Microsoft® SharePoint® Server 2007 Reporting with SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

5.1. Creating Your Data Backend

The first thing you will need for your reports is a data source. You can use any number of data sources, including the following:

• Microsoft SQL Server

• OLE DB

• Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services

• Oracle

• ODBC

• XML

• Report Server Model

• SAP NetWeaver BI

• Hyperion Essbase

• TERADATA

Some of these may seem very familiar and some may not. However, one thing you will probably notice is that, with options such as OLE DB, ODBC, and XML, you have a great selection of data repositories at your disposal.

Of this list, probably the two most widely used options are Microsoft SQL Server and XML. SQL is probably fairly intuitive, since this discussion revolves around Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services, right? It is only logical that the most popular data source to connect to your report would be the parent data backend: SQL Server.

However, the XML data option is at least as important and, depending on your business needs, could be vastly more important than any of the other options. Why is that? Because this allows you to directly connect to any web services rendering XML data. This may not seem like a big deal on the surface but, when you think about it, it really opens up a lot of possibilities. Assume, for example, that you have data that you really need to massage and filter, but it isn't sitting in a typical relational database format. You can create your own web service (using .NET, for example) and do whatever you want to do to data and then just return a dataset ...