SSRS – Reporting Roadmap in SQL Server 2016

With SQL Server 2016, the addition of new report types in SSRS is accompanied by an entirely new web experience for Reporting Services allowing users to access both paginated and mobile reports in one centralised location.

Database usually is the biggest investment in the solution for every organisation where data is storing from every direction and these data directions are given below-

From Traditional Sources – on-premises enterprise applications and databases.

From Sources Developed over the last decade – it contains websites, mobile applications, and social media and SaaS business applications.

From Sources Still emerging – data from the “Internet of Things.”

For the business growth, any organisation wants to visualize this data and takes the best decision to get the success. By understanding of the business needs, the paginated reports, the interactive reports and the mobile reports are also integrated in SQL Server Reporting Services 2016 released.

Harmonizing report types

SSRS 2016 is intend to standardise reporting content types across Microsoft on-premises, cloud and hybrid systems. It focuses on four report types:

Paginated Reports:  It can be built with SQL Server Report Builder or SQL Server Data Tools which allows for exact placement of elements on a page and are capable of complex display logic for creating printed reports or online operational reports. Paginated/operational reports have been a popular, invaluable foundation for day-to-day reporting and analytics for over a decade. These reports will continue to be a standard report type.

Interactive Reports:  It can be built with Power BI Desktop. Power BI Desktop is a contemporary visual data discovery application and the next generation of our Power View technology. It generates HTML5-based reports, ensuring compatibility across all modern browsers.

Mobile Reports: These reports are based on Datazen technology and optimized for mobile devices and form factors provide an optimal experience for users accessing BI reports on mobile devices. Plus point is that parameterized Datasets now supported in Mobile Reports.

We can now set a drill-through target for specific elements in our mobile reports, whether it is another mobile report or a Custom URL that we set.  We can also pass parameters through to the target as well, based on selections we’ve made in our mobile report.

By specifically designing reports for different mobile form factors, and enable users to get business insights, anyway, anywhere and from any device.

Analytical reports and charts created with Excel:  Excel is the most widely used analytical tool today and it will continue to be an important report type, critical to business solution on-premises and in the cloud.

For a richer API, we can use the Report Viewer control. The current version (Report Viewer 2015) is an ASP.NET Web Forms control, which although not quite ideal for an MVC web app, is possible to integrate via interop. There’s tons of customer demand for an alternative Report Viewer control designed for MVC and other web app frameworks (non-Web Forms)

References: Microsoft