ReportBuilder 3.0在SQL Server 2008 R2中令人印象深刻

我已经用2009年11月的CTP测试了SQL Server 2008 R2，这周我的重点是ReportBuilder 3.0。自从1.0版本以来，这个产品已经走过了很长的一段路，1.0版本的目标是让终端用户通过浏览器构建特别的报告。现在，ReportBuilder 3.0似乎也成为报表开发人员的首选GUI。让我们来看看。ReportBuilder 1.0要求使用Visual Studio提前设置报表模型。报表模型将包含选定表和视图的模板，用户可以从中构建报表。这种架构的好处是，ReportBuilder将生成与Visual Studio报表项目中的报表设计器中使用的RDL格式相同的RDL格式。因此，高级用户可以自己快速生成强大的特别报告，并将其发布给其他用户。这就是理论。微软已经发现，大多数分析师类型的用户更喜欢使用Excel，通过OLEDB提供程序直接连接到关系或多维数据库的数据。 Excel is a product they know inside and out. Learning a new product UI was always a tough sell. However, the report developers would gladly use ReportBuilder to generate powerful RDL reports with advanced features like infinite clickthrough, interactive sorting and drilldown without much effort. The RDL could then be opened using Report Designer for further editing (once you reset the Dataset to correctly point to the Report Model). But ReportBuilder would not support normal RDL reports built using Report Designer. Now, ReportBuilder 3.0 supports any RDL report regardless of where it was created and the GUI rivals that of Report Designer. ReportBuilder is launched from a browser using a button in Report Manager. It can also be executed from a URL from your own application or from Sharepoint. Effectively, the application is downloaded via http and run on the client machine. It can now also be installed locally and run from a Windows menu or shortcut. The new features in 3.0 include a Map Wizard so you can build an interactive map based on spatial data. You can include your own layer on top of the map to integrate with Virtual Earth, for instance. No mention of Google Earth surprise, surprise. I tested out the USA Map, with the States defined as spatial polygon objects. You can easily make them into hyperlinks for drilldown reporting. You can now create Shared Datasets so that queries can be reused in multiple reports. You can also create Report Parts that are reusable report items stored on the server. An example may be a chart that is needed on multiple reports. The idea is to be able to snap together a report from components. In the past we used Sub Reports and Stored Procedures so this gives us some extra options. Other features seem to have been borrowed from Excel. Now we have Sparklines and Data Bars for some extra visualization effects. The Excel export feature itself now allows you to export selected page breaks to named worksheets within the Excel file. I tested out ReportBuilder 3.0 using the "Create a Report" wizard and also editing existing reports built in Report Designer. It worked well. The GUI did seem to be much easier to use and all the features of Report Designer seemed to be there. So now you have a viable choice and can switch back and forth as you please. Let the users have Office and Excel. We'll keep ReportBuilder for ourselves, no problem. cheers Brian