SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 CTP (November 2006)
Microsoft released a public Community Technology Preview of SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 (SP2). You can find more information here. Since I usually blog on BI related stuff I'll only highlight what's important on BI :
Reporting Services
- You can integrate a report server instance with Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office 2007 SharePoint Server to store, secure, access, and manage report server items from a SharePoint site. Integration features are provided jointly through SP2 and a special Reporting Services Add-in that you download and install on an instance of the SharePoint technology you are using.
- To access a Hyperion System 9.3 BI+ Enterprise Analytics data source, Reporting Services now provides the Microsoft .NET Data Provider for Hyperion Essbase. This new data processing extension provides a graphical query designer that enables you to interactively build Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) queries. The Microsoft .NET Data Provider for Hyperion Essbase sends these MDX queries to the Hyperion System 9 Enterprise Analytics Adapter. The adapter uses those queries to build the structures necessary to query and retrieve data from a Hyperion Essbase OLAP repository. The Hyperion System 9 Enterprise Analytics Adapter is only available with Hyperion System 9.3 Beta 2. You must install Hyperion System 9.3 Beta 2 on the data source server before you can use Hyperion Essbase as a data source. For information about how to obtain Hyperion System 9.3 Beta 2, contact hyperion@microsoft.com.
- Report model generation from Oracle data sources that run on version 9.2.0.3 or later is supported.
Besides SQL 2005 SP2 CTP (nov2006) Micrsoft also relesed the beta bits for the SSRS Add-in for Sharepoint.
The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies is a Web download that provides features for running a report server within a larger deployment of Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The Reporting Services Add-in provides the following functionality:
- A Report Viewer Web Part that provides report viewing capability, export to other rendering formats, page navigation, search, print, and zoom.
- Web application pages so that you can create subscriptions and schedules, set model item security, and manage reports, models, and data sources.
- Support for using standard Windows SharePoint Services features including document management, collaboration, security, and deployment with report server content types. You can use alerts, versioning (check in/out), and Filter Web Parts with reports. You can add the Report Viewer Web Part to any page or dashboard on a SharePoint site and customize its appearance. You can use SharePoint permission levels and roles to control access to report server content. You can also use SharePoint forms authentication to support access over Internet connections.
1) Connection with the Filter web-parts :
2) Reports can now be managed as documents :
