Reporting Services Goodies
I just upgraded my Reporting Services installation to 2005 a couple of weekends ago. I was happy to see that I could still run and edit my existing reports in VS 2003 so I'll just upgrade the report definitions as I need to tweak them or when I have time. I actually was hoping to do the upgrade on November 8th -- the day after the release, but things don't move that fast in our shop.
I just created my first production RS 2005 report using some of the new features. I was able to use multi-valued parameters, interactive sorting and fixed table headings. These are features that the report users have been requesting for a long time. Unfortunately, these features disappear when a report is delivered via a subscription. (If anyone has a way around this, please post a comment.) So, I am delivering just the link to the report for now.
I also really love that you can manage Reporting Services from SQL Server Management Studio. It seems so much more efficient than the web interface, especially when configuring security. I am also working on getting Report Builder going for some of my customers as well. It is pretty cool, but took a while for me to get it figured out. I hope to write some articles for SSC on it pretty soon.