Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® Analysis Services 2008 with MDX

20.4. Creating Reports Based on a UDM

You have so far seen some capabilities provided by Reporting Services 2008 and how it can facilitate the creation of reports from a relational database. In Chapter 19 you learned the tight integration of Analysis Services with Integration Services that helps you load data into Analysis Services and perform administrative operations. By adding to those functions, Reporting Services 2008 provides you with the ability to create reports from the UDM by which Microsoft's SQL Server 2008 provides a truly end-to-end Business Intelligence solution to the market. Designing reports from Analysis Services 2008 databases is actually similar to designing reports from a relational database using Reporting Services 2008.

In the event you have experience with Reporting Services 2000 or 2005, you will be excited to know that Reporting Services 2008 contains both new features and extended capabilities associated with the original feature set. In Reporting Services 2000, specifying an MDX query and using the OLE DB provider for Analysis Services to integrate cube-based data into your reports was about the extent of the integration between the two products. There are significant improvements on that model; you will find much tighter integration existed between Reporting Services 2005 and Analysis Services 2005. There aren't major enhancements made with respect to integration between Report Services 2008 and Analysis Services 2008. However the enhancements made ...