Microsoft Report Builder Road Test

Microsoft first released Reporting Services in January 2004. It was slated to debut as part of SQL Server 2005, but given the repeated delays of that product and the solid capabilities in Reporting Services, Microsoft accelerated the offering as a free download to SQL Server 2000 customers. Reporting Services was positioned as a tool for IT developers, not business users. Authoring is done on the desktop using Business Intelligence Development Studio, a shell within Visual Studio 2005. Developers create queries using a graphical query builder that lets them join tables (similar to Microsoft Access) or, for more advanced queries, write custom SQL statements.

To address the needs of business authors, Microsoft released Report Builder in November 2005 as part of SQL Server 2005. It relies on the same Reporting Services infrastructure as reports authored in Visual Studio. Report Builder has let Microsoft compete more directly with BI pure-play vendors, but this first attempt at addressing business-user reporting needs doesn’t measure up to the competition in terms of flexibility, data access or, surprisingly, Office integration.

Read the full story (Intelligent Enterprise)