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

7.2. Summary

So what have you learned to this point? You learned in Chapters 5 and 6 some of the awesome power that SSRS has right out of the box. You saw how to create simple reports using the wizard and then how to take it to the next step by creating similar reports from scratch. You saw how to access simple SQL data by using stored procedure calls and, later, how to access SharePoint list data through using the included web services for those lists and the XML data source in SSRS. You saw how to customize the look and feel of these reports with drag-and-drop ease and how to go a little deeper and do formatting through the expressions editor. You have learned a lot.

So what did you learn in this chapter that makes it advanced? You learned that there are some limitations to SSRS, and, if you work in reporting long enough, you are likely to run into them. More important, you saw how to get around them. Sure, there are plenty of ways to address problems; unique solutions for unique circumstances. But with the approach you learned in this chapter, you can probably overcome most road bumps you encounter.

With the web service approach you learned in this chapter, you can take any problem and relegate it to your C# (or whatever your language preference) know-how. Whatever your data needs are, however, you need to manipulate that data, and you can do it in C#. You saw how to access two data sources that you had accessed in earlier chapters but in a new way. You directly connected to ...