Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services

Chapter 7

Advanced Report Design

What's in this chapter?

Adding report and page headers and footers

Using aggregate functions

Adding group totals

Creating report templates

Creating composite reports

Embedded formatting

Designing master/detail reports

Designing subreports

Navigating reports and using actions

Reporting on recursive data

The real power behind Reporting Services is its ability to creatively use data groups and combinations of report items and data regions. You can add calculations and conditional formatting by using simple programming code. Whether you are an application developer or a business report designer, this chapter contains important information to help you design reports to meet your users' requirements and to raise the bar with compelling report features.

This chapter covers the following topics:

• Advanced data grouping features
• Headers and aggregation
• Lists and data regions
• Links and drill-through reports
• Using custom code to extend formatting and apply business logic
• Advanced charting features

Headers and Footers

Page headers and footers can be configured so that they are displayed and printed on all pages or omitted from the first and/or last page. Unlike many other reporting tools, there is no designated report header or footer. This is because the report body acts as a header or footer, depending on where you place data region items. If you were to place a table an inch below the top of the report body, this would give you a report header 1 inch tall. ...