Professional SQL Server™ Analysis Services 2005 with MDX

17.3. Creating a Report on Relational Database

The Report Designer is used to design reports based on a relational database. The Report Designer provides the functionality to retrieve data from various data sources, design the actual report and, finally, deploy it. The report designer also allows you to preview the report before you deploy to the report server and provide subsequent access to various users. In this section you will be designing a report on Sales of products from the Adventure Works DW database. To design this report, perform the following steps:

1. Launch the BIDS and create a new Project.

2. In the Business Intelligence Projects Project Type, select Report Project and provide a new project name, as shown in Figure 17-1.

   Figure 17.1. Figure 17-1

   

3. You will see two folders called Shared Data Sources and Reports in the Solution Explorer window. The Shared Data Sources folder is used to share data sources between multiple reports. Right-click the Reports folder and select Add New Report, as shown in Figure 17-2, to launch the Report Wizard.

   Figure 17.2. Figure 17-2

   

4. If you get the "Welcome" page, dismiss it. The first real page of the Report Wizard allows you to specify the data source. The default data source type is Microsoft SQL Server, as shown in Figure 17-3. Click Edit ...