Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services

Foreword

Fifteen years ago, in January 1997, our company, Panorama Software, was acquired by Microsoft during its entry into the business intelligence space. That was a long time ago. In fact, it was so long ago, I'm not sure that business intelligence was even called BI. Back then our mission and strategy were simple, accompanied by the short but effective slogan “OLAP for the masses.” For the most part that mission hasn't changed over the years. We've simply focused on different aspects of the product that would deliver us the “masses.”

In the early years, our focus and mission were to ensure that our technology was easy to use, didn't require much consulting (relative to what was required at the time in the market), and yes, was cheap. The idea was to make the technology accessible to as many companies as possible. The other element of the strategy was to make the solution a platform play and build a healthy ecosystem around our BI offering.

Indeed, in the early years we set out to build a server with strong capabilities, with a rich set of APIs and query language (MDX). We also built a thriving ecosystem of partners.

Results were seen quickly. The SQL OLAP Server, later known as SQL Server Analysis Services, became the most widely used OLAP Server in the world, a title the product still holds today.

Witnessing the market adoption of and reaction to the Analysis Services server, we began our second act by offering something new and innovative for reporting solutions: SQL Server ...