Direct Reports : Katmai

Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (What's up with Report Builder?)

bwelcker — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 00:33:58 GMT

Hopefully, you have gotten a chance to work with the latest CTP of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services . But if you have, you may be a bit puzzled by the report design options in the CTP. Specifically: Report Builder looks just like it did in SSRS 2005....(read more)

Everybody (Why Leave IIS?)

bwelcker — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 23:34:03 GMT

If you have gotten a chance to try an early build of SQL Server Reporting 2008 Reporting Services, you know that one of the changes in the product is the removal of the Internet Information Services (IIS) dependency. I have gotten some questions about...(read more)

When I Was Born for the 7th Time (Thoughts from TechEd)

bwelcker — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:46:00 GMT

Last week I attended TechEd in Orlando, Florida . Here are my thoughts on the event. This year was TechEd's 15th anniversary. I realized on the way down that I was attending my 10th consecutive TechEd. When I started attending, TechEd was about 2,000...(read more)

Dreamy (Reporting Services at TechEd)

bwelcker — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 19:28:00 GMT

Unlike previous years, I decided not to attend the first day of TechEd. This means that I missed BobMu's keynote but you can read about the details from many of the TechEd bloggers.

If you read the press release from TechEd today, we announced the official name for the next release of SQL Server - SQL Server 2008 (so long, Katmai). You can also download the first CTP. While I would encourage you to try some of the new features in the CTP, you are going to be a little disappointed if you are looking for new Reporting Services features. We have scheduled our first set of new features for the next CTP - so stay tuned for a few more months. If you attend one of our TechEd sessions, you will get a preview of what is coming.

Our second big announcement from TechEd was that we have acquired the data visualization products of Dundas Software. Many of you have been using the enhanced chart for Reporting Services along with the gauge and map custom report items. We realized the importance of data visualization components for reporting so we purchased this codebase for inclusion in future versions of SSRS. We are working on the integration right now so I can't promise how much will make it into SQL Server 2008.

As for TechEd itself, I'm heading out tomorrow. Feel free to stop by the Business Intelligence part of the Learning Center and say hi. If you are looking for some Reporting Services related content, try these sessions:

BIN 305 - Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
DAT 201 - The Next Release of Microsoft SQL Server: Overview
BIN 202 - Third Annual Business Intelligence Power Hour
BIN04-TLC - Reporting Services Rendering Tips and Tricks
BIN 306 - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Advanced Report Design
BIN 318 - Reporting Services Futures: Report Authoring for Information Workers
BIN05-TLC - Integrating Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007
BIN15-TLC - Reporting Services Programmability
BIN 306R - Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Advanced Report Design

Sky Blue Sky (MS BI Conference Notes)

bwelcker — Sat, 19 May 2007 19:53:49 GMT

Wow, what a show! I spent this week recovering from the first ever Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference. Conferences in downtown Seattle are always fun because I live in Seattle and don't have to cross the bridge to get to the Microsoft campus. I'd like to thank all of the folks that came up and told me how they were using SSRS and how useful the blog was to them. Here's a quick rundown of the show highlights for me.

Tuesday

The opening reception has really nice food (big prawns) and lots of people that I haven't seen in years.

Wednesday

During the first keynote, Jeff Raikes announces our acquisition of OfficeWriter from SoftArtisans. Well, technically, he announced that we acquired the company, which is not the case. We acquired the technology for a future version of SSRS and they will continue to sell the existing product. The details are correct in the press release.
Jeff also announces that the next version of SQL Server, code-named "Katmai", will ship next year. Yes, that is 2008, not 2010 or 2011.
I do a podcast where I talk a little about the conference and Katmai and the upcoming Seahawks season. The rest of the NFC west has improved but so have we. Should be a good season.
My session on Integration of Office SharePoint Server and Reporting Services (white paper here) went well except for the beginning of the demo. I was trying to show how you can configure an instance of SSRS to be in SharePoint Integrated mode. Unfortunately, I have multiple instances of SSRS on the demo machine and I was configuring the wrong one. I finally figured it out but it was a little scary for a few minutes.
Lots and lots of questions about RS Katmai at the exhibit hall reception. I know people are excited to get their hands on it and you will be able to in a couple of months.
The Panorama party at the Space Needle was a blast. From the observation deck, you can just barely make out my house (actually, the cell phone tower beside my house).

Thursday

Ted Kummert, my VP, talks in depth about Katmai in his keynote. Our product manager Francois does a demo of OfficeWriter.
I reprise my "executive dashboard" demo at the BI Power Hour. In my demo, I show a CustomReportItem that I built that allows for interactive KPIs within a grid. By clicking on a cell, you can mark it as good (O) or bad (X). By the end of the demo, the crowd realizes that it is actually a tic tac toe game. I'll post the code over the next couple of weeks.
The PerformancePoint team does a very nice "Deal or No Deal" game show and manage to get Bill Baker to put on a blonde wig. Patrick Husting posted some nice pictures from the session.
Cool attendee party at the Experience Music Project (aka the Jimi Hendrix museum).

Friday

Steve Ballmer does a nice job (as usual) on his keynote by articulating the importance of BI and how Microsoft's commitment to this space.

Watusi (SSRS Management Tools Changes for Katmai)

bwelcker — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:52:00 GMT

For Katmai we are considering the removal of namespace management (folders, reports, data sources, models) from the Reporting Services Add-in for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). In other words, we are considering removing the 'Home' folder under the Reporting Server node in SSMS.

Why the change?

Customer feedback and usage data indicates that Report Manager and/or SharePoint are the tools of choice for managing the Report Server namespace, rather than the SSMS add-in. The design constraints of SSMS mean that any new namespace functionality is significantly expensive to implement, specifically adding support for the namespace in SharePoint integrated mode. For Katmai we want to invest in SharePoint and Report Manager for namespace management and focus on SSMS as a server-level management tool.

This means that the namespace management functions that are not available in Report Manager (Model ClickThrough and Model Item Security) will be added to Report Manager (they are already in SharePoint). Job Management, configuring System properties, and administering Roles will be moved to SSMS. In addition, SSMS will be updated to work in SharePoint mode.

If you have feedback about these changes, please feel free to comment.