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

11.6. Static and Data-Driven Subscriptions

Rather than allowing users to connect to a SharePoint site to view reports, it is often required that reports be delivered to them in various ways other than browser-based access. None of the report-processing techniques (cached instances and snapshots) covered in this chapter so far offer an automated way of delivering a report to end users.

As previously discussed, on-demand report execution requires that users actively request reports each time they want to view them, which may introduce some performance overhead. Thankfully, Reporting Services offers subscriptions that can be used to schedule and then automate the delivery of reports via email, to a network folder, or even through periodic dumps in a SharePoint document library where users have set up alerts to get notified when a new item is added.

In this section, you learn how to work with static and data-driven subscriptions to provide a more flexible report-delivery mechanism that runs in the background.

11.6.1. Understanding Delivery Extensions

Once a report is published to SharePoint, it can be executed on demand, or the execution output can be delivered to various locations on a designated schedule. A report server instance configured for SharePoint integration includes four delivery extensions that enable you to distribute reports within your organization to various locations. Delivery extensions are the heart of subscription. For now, let's just take a brief look at what ...