Using Reporting Services together with your cube

A third tool that can be used together with Analysis Services as a query tool is Reporting Services. Reporting Services is a standardized reporting tool that can be used against a variety of data sources. You can either build reports using Visual Studio or Report Builder; both of the tools build .rdl files that contain an XML based report definition language.

Note

Report Builder is a tool that is targeted more at end users. It has an MS Office like user interface. Visual Studio is a tool that is more targeted at developers, and gives the developer the possibility to work with source control systems when developing reports. If you wish to use Report Builder, you can download the stand-alone installation as part of the SQL Server 2012 Feature Pack using the following link: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=268227.

In the following step-by-step instructions, we will add an additional project containing the Reporting Services report to the FirstCube...