Primary components of a report

Before diving into all the cool features and functionalities offered by SSRS, it is important to have a basic understanding of the primary components that make up an SSRS report as well as a mental model of how these components work together to deliver information to the business; which is, after all, the entire purpose of standard reporting.

The primary components of an SSRS report are as follows:

• Data source

• Dataset

• Report item

The following diagram shows how data flows from the source system through these components and out to the end user:

Flow of data through primary report components

Data source

A data source is typically the first object created while building an SSRS report and contains all the information necessary to make a connection to a source system. The source system could be a SQL Server database, Analysis Services cube, a SharePoint list, or some other type of business application database such as Oracle.

While most reports typically pull data...