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Empower Business Users with Report Builder
2.0
Ken Lai
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 includes a new
version of Report Builder which was first introduced in SQL
Server 2005. It allows end users to create ad hoc reports
without the requirement for deep technical knowledge. It
delivers an intuitive, Office-like report authoring environment
enabling business and power users to leverage their experience
with Microsoft Office 2007 products. It’s now a local client
install rather than a click-once application that you download
and install from Report manager. Since it is a thick client
application you can now design more complex reports then prior
versions. Compared with Report Builder 1.0, here is my list of
the top 5 new features:
1. Enable users to customize and update all
existing reports.
I feel this is the best new feature. Report
Builder 1.0 claimed it allowed business users to create their
own reports. While factually correct, Report Builder 1.0 only
allowed creation of reports against the Report Model (a report
model is a business description of an underlying database that
is used for building ad hoc reports in Report Builder 1.0. It is
an additional layer of information that maps database tables and
views into concepts that are meaningful to business users.). If
you deployed reports that did not use a Report Model as data
source and then tried to modify them using Report Builder 1.0
the program didn’t allow you to open the existing report,
because the data source associated with the report was not a
report model. This limitation frustrated people when they were
not using a Report Model as their report data source. With
Report Builder 2.0 full data source support is provided. It
continues to support the Report Model, and also allows you to
create your own data sources based on a relational database or
multi-dimensional database. You can use the server resources
such as shared data sources. This is great improvement as users
are able to customize and update all existing reports,
regardless of where they were initially designed.
2. Multiple data regions in a single report
In most situations people want to create a
report which combines multiple charts and tables. But this was
not possible in Report Builder 1.0 because it only supported one
data region in the report. Users were required to either create
a chart report or a table but not both. Report Builder 2.0
supports multiple data regions in a single report. You can
insert tables and charts and also matrixes into a single report,
and they can have queries of data from multiple data sources.
The following is an example of combining different regions.
 
3. Flexible Report
Layout
Another significant enhancement delivered in Report Builder
2.0 is the new Flexible Report Layout data region. This feature
allows users to build more flexible reports since it now supports free
form layout which was not available in 1.0. When you build
matrix reports, it supports multiple groups. In addition, users
can add subtotals for each group level. For example, the figure
above shows how you can add two levels in both rows and columns
and a summary for each group level. You can also drill down by
each group.
This flexibility is very nice to have as it was really
difficult to add these subtotals to different group levels in
Report Builder 1.0.
4. Enriched Data
Visualization
Report Builder 2.0 has a new gauge data region which supports
two gauge types; linear and radial. This new feature is
especially good for building Key Performance Indicator reports
for operational or executive dashboards.
Also, Report Builder 1.0 only included a limited number of
report types; Column, Line, Bar and Area. In Report Builder 2.0
there are significantly more chart types. These are very similar
to the charts found in Office 2007 and include Shape, Range,
Scatter and Polar charts.
5. Office Style
Interface
In keeping with Microsoft’s stated goal of bringing "BI to
the Masses", the interface for Report Builder 2.0 is very
similar to the Office 2007 environment. This familiar interface
makes Report Builder 2.0 much more intuitive and easy to use.
With these new features, business users now can more easily
create richer reports with Report Builder 2.0 than the previous
version. Report building can be done by a much wider spectrum of
people and not be constrained by resources in the IT or Business
Analysis functions. This should allow organizations to provide
much better access to information for all of their knowledge
workers.
For more information, please go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/report-builder.aspx
Ken Lai is a Senior Software Developer at Agora.
He can be reached at
klai@agorainc.com
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