Advantages of Reporting Services 2005

Hello,

I am working on the Reporting Services 2005, I don' know anything about Business Object.

Please let me know what are the advantages of Reporting Services 2005 over the Business Object.

Any specific link will be useful for me.

Thanks in advance.

Bye.

If you already have a SQL Server 2005 box...SSRS is free. That is usually a very compelling argument. Check with MS on your specific licensing scenario though.

The next is Report Builder which is a user friendly ad-hoc tool for analysts to build their own reports without the learning curve of Visual Studio (although the learning curve is really not that high on RS).

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Hello Davind,

I agree with you on the advantage you have mentioned above but I have question?

Reporing services have direct connection to the database there is know any middle tire, and I throught that because of this the processing of report might be slow. In the same case Business Object have some middletire I don't know exactly.

Any help in this will be appreciated.

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check this blog for all the Resources link on Reporting services.

http://blogs.sqlxml.org/vinodkumar/archive/2007/09/14/sql-rs-resources-links.aspx

Madhu

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Yes, when you look at BO, Cognos, SAS BI etc.. it is understood that you will build some middle tier...like an OLAP cube to report.

The difference with SSRS is that it is purely a reporting tool, abstract from a datasource. So think of it this way, you CAN report directly against a live OLTP database. To your point, you may have some performance considerations to make. But you CAN also build reports against a datawarehouse (SQL) or against Cubes that have been defined.

It goes beyond that...You can also build reports directly against other datasources like Oracle, Access..I've developed real-time SSRS reports against Lawson (Oracle hosted on Unix) for example.

Lastly, you can build reports based upon Models or even SSIS. SSIS can be thought of as a middle-ware...very robust ETL tool on steroids. So think of being able to mix DW data with say..live RSS feeds or data from a web service, or some real time ETL integration?

A report model is entirely different in that you can build a report from a user friendly definition without having to have a knowledge of the table structures, field names, business rules and joins (of course that 'model' must be defined first by someone who does)..that then leaves report building in the hands of analysts..not programmers.

So the biggest thing that I see is choice..you have deep choices to make in the datasets you consume and are not limited solely to OLAP datasources or MDX code. Plus the technology is primarily standard across the Microsoft framework. Meaning, the models can be used in SSRS or even Report Builder. The OLAP cubes or datasources can of course be consumed in SSRS, but also Excel PivotTable, ProClarity...basically any cube viewer tool of choice. Those should be additional measuring sticks when looking at other vendor solutions in BI.