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

11.5. Report Processing Options

In the previous section, you learned different aspects of running on-demand reports. Although on-demand report execution always results in the most up-to-date data returned to users, each time the report is requested, a new instance of the report is created, which in turn results in a new query issued against the underlying data source. This can exponentially add up to report server overall resource utilization and potentially can bring a well-designed deployment to its knees.

When users don't need the most up-to-date data from the data source, and when you need fast report performance, there are some other processing options available to help you manage your report delivery needs in more efficient ways. For example, you can run a report from cache or snapshots to prevent the report from being run at arbitrary times during peak hours.

In this section, you will learn different processing options for configuring your report server instance in integrated mode. In the real world, most of the reports you develop have one or more parameters, so before we dive into evaluating different processing options, it makes sense to look at managing report parameters first. Without properly setting your report parameters, the results shown in such reports may not be accurate.

11.5.1. Managing Report Parameters

Unlike when you run parameterized reports in an on-demand way, end users won't get a chance to specify parameter values for reports delivered to them via ...