Professional SQL Server™ 2005 Programming

17.2. Building Simple Report Models

To create a simple model, start by opening Business Intelligence Studio.

Note that this is entirely different from SQL Server Management Studio, which we've been working with thus far. Business Intelligence Studio is a different work area that is highly developer (rather than administrator) focused, and is oriented around many of the "extra" services that SQL Server has beyond the base relational engine that has been our focus until now. In addition to the work we'll do with Business Intelligence Studio in this chapter, we will also visit it some to work with Integration Services in Chapter 19.

Choose FileNew Project, and you should bring up a dialog that allows you to choose between several types of Business Intelligence projects. Choose "Report Model Project" and the name of your choice (I'll be going with the rather descriptive ReportModelProject), and click OK. This will bring you to what should look like an everyday, run-of-the-mill Visual Studio development environment.

NOTE

Note that the exact appearance of this dialog may vary somewhat depending on whether you have Visual Studio installed and, if so, which specific languages and templates you've installed. The preceding image is of the most generic SQL Server-only installation.

If your Visual Studio environment is still in its default configuration, you should see the Solution Explorer ...