Reporting Services – An Architectural Perspective - Part 1

 Introduction:

       SQL reporting services is a comprehensive server based solution that enables the creation, management and delivery of the reports in either the traditional paper based format or the web based reports.  It is tightly integrated with the SQL server. The data that's needed is shown in a report format thus increasing the data processing capabilities:

Life Cycle of the Report Creation:

    Basically there are three stages in the life cycle of the reporting services:
1.    Report Authoring
2.    Report Management
3.    Report Delivery

Report Authoring:  The developers can create reports that needs to be published in the report                    server. this is called report authoring. Basically this is done using VS.Net      2003 Report designer or some other tools that use Report Definition                    Language(RDL).

Report Management: Report definitions , folders, resources are published and managed as web                    services. These reports can be executed on demand or these can be executed  in a                    predefined schedule and cached  for improving the performance. for Highly                    criticial and volatile data this is managed and executed at the time of demand.                    for other purposes it is cached.

Report Delivery:
                   It supports both pull and push delivery. Users can view reports in a web-based                    format or in e-mail
Architecture:
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Microsoft SQL Reporting Services Architecture is a multi-tiered architecture. It is a set of integrated components.

It consist of three layers:
1. Application Layer,
2. Data Layer,
3. Server Layer.

Application Layer:
     It consists of
     1. Report Manager
     2. Browser
     3. Report Designer
     4. Command Line Utilities
     5. Third Party tools

Data Layer:

     1. Report Server Data Base
     2. The Data Source

Report Server:

     1. Scheduling and Delivery processor
     2. Programmatic interfaces
     3. Rendering Extensions 
     4. Delivery Extensions
     5. Report Processor
     6. Data Processing Extensions

Now lets delve in to the topics in detail:

                     Report Manager
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    It is a web-based report access and management tool.
It can be used to perform the following activities:

--> View, search, and subscribe to reports
--> Create and manage folders, linked reports, report history, schedules, data source connections,      and subscriptions
--> Set properties and report parameters
--> Manage role definitions and assignments that control user access to reports and folders

Report manager provides a user-interface to the programmer. It consist of Controls and Web pages.
The functionality of the report manager primarily depends on the user Roles.

To Run the Report manager:
just type
  http://<webservername>/reports

                          Report Designer
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    Report designer basically is a tool that is used to create and publish reports.
Basically the report designer is integrated with the VS.Net 2003. This is installed by means of a set up program. This helps in Developing the reports. while developing the reports in report designer we can test it locally without publishing it to the report server.

                          Report Server DataBase
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     The report server database is a SQL Server database that stores Reporting Services data such as report definitions, report meta data, cached reports, snapshots, and resources. It also stores security settings, encrypted data, scheduling and delivery data, and extension information.

                          Data Sources supported by Reporting Services:
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     Reporting Services retrieves report data using data processing extensions. Data processing extensions use ADO.NET managed providers. Reporting Services provides extensions to retrieve data from the following data sources:

SQL Server 2000
SQL Server 7.0
SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services
Oracle
ODBC data sources
OLE DB data sources

                          Summary:
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    In this article we have seen about the basic architecture of SQL reporting services. The remaining part of the SQL Reporting Services Architecture will be covered in the next article

                                                            .........Will be continued