Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Larson is the Best
Comment: Great, easy to follow. Mr. Larson is the best SQL 2005 RS/BI author in my opinion. Also, I attended some of his sessions at DevCon 2006 in Orlando. He is very knowledgable and approachable. He takes the time during and after sessions to answer all questions.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Zen and the art of Reporting Services
Comment: SQL Server Reporting Services is a comprehensive, server-based reporting solution which provides support to develop, manage, and deliver reports on different mediums and platforms. Brian Larson in his latest book, "SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services" has done an excellent job in making the case for SQL Server Reporting Services (SRSS) by providing comprehensive knowledge to jump start with SQL server reporting services.
As Brian Welcker, Microsoft's group program manager of SSRS observes, the author has been working with Reporting services for a long time. Since he has been a part of development effort involved with reporting services, Brian Larson has a deep understanding of reporting services infrastructure which reflects in his writing. Being an MCDBA, author of "Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2005" and "Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services", Brian Larson has in-depth understanding of business intelligence solutions and real-world reporting scenarios.
"SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services" is hands on, no-nonsense, well organized step by step guide to SRSS. This 800 page book is divided into four parts and twelve chapters, in which author has provided wealth of information on all the pertaining topics. This book is illustrated and provides diagram and figures of every step defined during the process. The four main sections are "Putting the pieces in place", the beginning, "Report Authoring", about writing reports, "Report saving", about report publishing and management of reports and final part i.e. Appendices which has language references and some further guidelines. What I liked most about this book is its personal coordination and in-depth approach for instance not many reporting books discuss localization in detail and in a real-world scenario style in reports as you'll see it being done in Brian's book. Since it's written by one author, I found the reading to be much more consistent and harmonic across the book.
Following is the chapter summary for the reader to see that Brian has covered most of the required ground for issues one may encounter during report development.
Chapter 1: Let's Start at the Very Beginning
Chapter 2: Putting the Pieces in Place: Installing Reporting Services
Chapter 3: DB 101: Database Basics
Chapter 4: A Visit to Emerald City: The Report Wizard
Chapter 5: Removing the Train Wheels: Building Basic Reports
Chapter 6: Graphic Expression: Using Charts and Images in Reports
Chapter 7: Kicking It Up a Notch: Intermediate Reporting
Chapter 8: Beyond Wow: Advanced Reporting
Chapter 9: A Leading Exporter: Exporting Reports to Other Rendering Formats
Chapter 10: How Did We Ever Manage Without You? The Report Manager
Chapter 11: Delivering the Goods: Report Delivery
Chapter 12: Extending Outside the Box: Customizing Reporting Services
Appendix a: report item reference
Appendix b: web service interface reference
Appendix c: report definition language reference
Appendix d: ad hoc reporting
This book is an upgrade from previous reporting services book and is equally valuable for both the beginners and intermediate reporting services users.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book for Learning Reporting Services
Comment: How many times have you read a book that explains a technology, only to find out that you can't really be productive with it until you learn the tool that delivers it? Without a doubt, knowing how a technology works is important. But, these days, so is being productive right out of the box. This book gives the reader the best of both worlds.
Part I of the book provides an overview of the report authoring and report serving architectures. It explains the report structure and the differences between the two reporting tools, Report Builder (for ad-hoc reporting and covered as an appendix) and Report Designer (the report development tool and the main focus of this book). This is followed with how to install and configure reporting services. In general, Part I provides a high level overview of Reporting Services.
For me though, the main value of the book is in Parts II & III, Report Authoring and Report Serving. This is where you really learn how to use Reporting Services. It's hands-on and teaches how to create reports for a fictitious company called Galactic Delivery Services (GDS). Despite the interplanetary coverage of GDS, the reports are based on real world scenarios that highlight the features of RS. Each report is prefaced with a "Features Highlighted" section that clearly identifies what the reader will learn. This is followed by the detailed steps necessary to create the report, usually broken down into a series of tasks. At the end of each task, there are associated "Task Notes" that explain the steps in detail. The beauty of this format is that it provides the context right where you need it.
Part III, Report Serving shows how to use the Report Manager to deploy and manage reports. It covers, using the reports you created from Part II, Report Caching, Execution Snapshots, and Report History.
For me, in order to learn something well, the hands-on approach works best. I've found that after working through all the examples, the best reference is now the reports that I've created. And if there is something that I need that wasn't covered in one of the reports, then I usually have learned enough to get at the solution myself.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: started reading it
Comment: this looks like a good book, have the read the first 4 chapters and I have some decent knowledge about reporting services already. will add more to my review once I finish reading it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great Detailed Tutorial For Those New To Reporting Services
Comment: Many reviewers of this book have given it high marks because it is a terrific tutorial and that introduces most of the crucial techniques for writing great reports. I would agree as I have reporting experience with MS-Access and Crystal and this book helped me get up to speed quickly. If you like learning in a step-by-step fashion right out of a book - this is the book!
The bad reviews came from people that were looking for more of a reference type book. While this book is not a bad reference it does fall short as a reference book. For example, one reviewer brought up that the ability to shade alternating detail rows of a report does not appear to be easy to find in this book. I would agree with that. I was unable to go into the index and find a quick solution in this book.
If you want a better reference book try the WROX book, Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. That book is not as good as this book from a step-by-step standpoint but it is a better reference when you need a quick solutions. For example, page 272 has code on how to shade alternating rows - they call it Greenbar Reports. It was not easy to find in this book either. How many people would look up "Greenbar Reports" in the reference? I was looking into "shading alternative rows". I just happened to stumble upon it.
I bought both books together. Of course there is lots of overlap but between the two that is all you will need to become a pro at Reporting Services.
Reporting Services could use a COOKBOOK-style text like they have for Access and other programming languages. Those types of books have served me well over the years. Until then this book and the WROX book should do the trick!
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