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

10.3. Reporting against SharePoint Lists

Lists are the building blocks of a SharePoint site, and many different types of lists are created automatically for every SharePoint site. SharePoint lists store information in pretty much the same way a relational database management system such as SQL Server stores data: in rows and columns. Lists provide a boatload of functionality already baked into the SharePoint platform such as UI elements for managing data, versioning, workflows, event handlers, and so on. These types of out-of-the-box functionality are tempting enough to make some customers wonder if they should keep all their data (or at least some portion of it) in lists and use it in the various out-of-the-box functionality contexts that SharePoint offers.

In this section, the end goals are to learn how to report against SharePoint lists and how to link the returned result sets in a drillthrough manner to other reports.

10.3.1. Choosing a Reporting Solution

Let's take a short break from the technical side of reporting against SharePoint lists and address an important question before you move on: What reporting solution should you choose? This surprisingly simple question can reveal a lot about where to store your data and what reporting solution you should adopt to extract what you need from your underlying data.

Although SharePoint lists can be easily created and managed (without requiring specialized skills in designing, implementing, and maintaining custom databases), they ...