Agile Methodology Approach to SSRS Reporting. How to utilize principles from Agile project management process and utilize it for creating better SSRS reports.

1. Danielson Samuel
Consultant

2. Agile Methodology is an approach to project management based on iterative
and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve
through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams. It
promotes adaptive planning, evolutionary development and delivery, a timeboxed iterative approach, and encourages rapid and flexible response to
change.
Sql Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server side reporting platform with
which you can create interactive, tabular, graphical, or free-form reports from
relational, multidimensional, or XML-based data sources

3. Report
Template
Design
Requirements
from
Clients/Reports
from legacy
Systems
Data
Mapping
Creating
SSRS Reports
with Agile
process
Report
Testing and
QA
Report
Design
Query
Design and
Optimization
Final Reports
Delivered to
Clients

4. Requirements for the reports from the users may be in the form of:
1) Converting existing reports to SSRS server side reporting.
2) Creating brand new reports to improve business processes.
Basic requirements that needs to be collected can consists of
1) What should the report title or name be?
2) Where to collect the data(Databases, tables, stored procedures etc.)
3) What parameters or filters are needed?
4) How the report should be rendered? HTML, PDF, Excel, …etc? This is vary important
because it determines the sizing.
5) How do you envision end users will run the reports? The web? In an application?
6) When do you need this report?

5. • Add report parameters to allow a user to change the report data. Report parameters
that are linked to query parameters on the dataset properties can reduce the
amount of data retrieved from a data source. If you supply default parameters for
each report parameter, the report runs automatically on first use. You can also
provide a list of valid values for a parameter, so the user can choose from values that
are known to exist on the data source.
• Generalize a query by adding query parameters. The syntax for queries that include
variables depends on the type of data source you connect to.
• Organize report pages to provide answers to specific questions at a glance.
• Add interactive sort buttons to data region columns.
• Add a date stamp and report name to the report.
• Use visibility options to hide complexity, but allow a user to drill down into areas of
interest
• Provide a document map or a customized internal links table for a report for each of
navigation.
• Align chart groups with table groups to provide a way to visualize tabular data.
• Provide conditional color or images to highlight data values.

6. Report Builder is a report authoring
environment for business users who
prefer to work in the Microsoft Office
environment. You work with one
report at a time. You can modify a
published report directly from a
report server. You can quickly build a
report by adding items from the
Report Part Gallery provided by
report designers from your
organization

7. Report Designer in Business
Intelligence Development
Studio is a report authoring
environment that is hosted
in Microsoft Visual Studio.
Use Report Designer project
and solution files to organize
and maintain a master copy
of report definitions, report
parts, shared data
sources, shared
datasets, and resource files
such as images and ESRI
shapefiles for maps.

8. Expressions are used frequently in
reports to control content and
report appearance. Expressions are
written in Microsoft Visual
Basic, and can use built-in
functions, custom code, report and
group variables, and user-defined
variables. Expressions begin with an
equal sign (=).

9. Templates serve as a ready to use
baseline to develop SSIS Package
or SSRS report from so that the
reports would all have the same
appearance to your
customers, and the packages
would all be set up with the
proper servers and configurations.
In order to create templates, copy
the Reports rdlx files to the
following directory: C:Program
Files (x86)Microsoft Visual Studio
9.0Common7IDEPrivateAssemb
liesProjectItemsReportProject.
The same notes apply for 32/64
bit, installed drive, and SQL
version.

10. Report Properties:
In SQL Server Data
Tools (SSDT), you must specify
the report server and
optionally the folders for
reports and shared data
sources so that you can
publish the items in a Report
Server project to a report
server. The properties and
values that SQL Server Data
Tools (SSDT) needs to
build, preview an deploy
reports are stored in project
configurations of the Report
Server project

11. Reporting Services
Configuration Manager is used
to configure a Reporting
Services Native Mode
installation
Local or remote report server
instance can be configured
with Report Services
Configuration Manager.

12. Role Assignments:
Predefined role describes a collection of
related tasks. You can assign groups and
user accounts to predefined roles to
provide immediate access to report server
operations.
• Item-level roles provide varying levels
of access to report server items and
operations that affect those items.
Item-level roles are defined on the
root node (Home) and all items
throughout the report server folder
hierarchy.
• System-level roles authorize access at
the site level. Item and system-level
roles are mutually exclusive but are
used together to provide
comprehensive permissions to report
server content and operations.

13. Variety of viewing formats can be
selected, reports can be exported
to other applications such as
Microsoft Excel, and users can
subscribe to published reports. The
reports that you create can be
viewed over a Web-based
connection or as part of a
Microsoft Windows application or
SharePoint site. You can also create
data alerts on reports published to
a SharePoint site and receive email
messages when report data
changes.

14. Testing is important through out the
lifecycle of SSRS report development.
1. Verify the report runs with a broad
variety of parameter values and in
whatever way the users will be
receiving the report. For example that
a subscription runs and deploys the
report as desired.
2. Verify that the expected data is
returned.
3. Verify that the performance of the
report is within an acceptable range

15. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159267(v=sql.105).aspx
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159253(v=sql.105).aspx
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/articles/SQL+Spackle/72869/