Professional SQL Server™ Analysis Services 2005 with MDX

17.4. Creating Reports Based on a UDM

You have so far seen some capabilities provided by Reporting Services 2005 and how it can facilitate the creation of reports from a relational database. In Chapter 16 you learned the tight integration of Analysis Services with Integration Services that helps you load data into Analysis Services and perform administrative operations. By adding to those functions, Reporting Services 2005 provides you the ability to create reports from the UDM by which Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 provides a truly end-to-end business intelligence solution to the market. Designing reports from Analysis Services 2005 databases is actually similar to designing reports from a relational database using Reporting Services 2005.

In the event you have experience with Reporting Services 2000, you will be excited to know that Reporting Services 2005 contains both new features and extended capabilities associated with the original feature set. In Reporting Services 2000, specifying an MDX query and using the OLEDB provider for Analysis Services to integrate cube-based data into your reports was about the extent of the integration between the two products. There are significant improvements on that model; you will find much tighter integration exists between Reporting Services 2005 and Analysis Services 2005. Specifically, the product now has an MDX query designer, which enables you to retrieve data from any UDM through the technique of drag and drop, without you actually ...