Professional Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Reporting Services

Chapter 15. Integrating Reports into Custom Applications

Reporting Services was designed to be a flexible reporting technology that can be easily integrated into a variety of scenarios. Many reporting needs will never expand beyond the out-of-the-box functionality provided by Reporting Services. However, if the requirement arises, Reporting Services includes endless opportunities for integration with custom-built applications. The next chapter will explore integrating Reporting Services into a SharePoint environment. However, there are also organizations that maintain a custom corporate reporting portal. In these situations, developers might need a way to display numerous reports in a Web environment. Reporting Services can also be embedded into any of the lines of business applications. Developers might want to use Reporting Services to create invoices or purchase orders directly from their applications. Some organizations may decide that the default Report Manager is not robust enough for their needs. In this situation, a custom reporting management application can be built that completely replaces and expands on the functionality of the out-of-the-box Report Manager.

All these issues can be solved with the features available in Reporting Services. In this chapter, you will take a look at the following three methods of rendering reports from Reporting Services:

• Using URLs to access reports

• Using the Reporting Services Web service to programmatically render reports

• Using the MicrosoftReportViewer ...