This is the final part to my review of this book.  Part one is located here and part two is located here.

Chapter 8 – This is the final chapter on report development.  Several advanced concepts such as using .NET code in expressions to customize report rendering and behavior (good stuff to know!), using subreports, using .NET assemblies, multivalued parameters, and report navigation.  This chapter is chock full of practice reports for you to create.  The one I liked the most was the report that showed how easy it is to put dynamic columns in your report with the Matrix template.  Many a time I wished I had that for reports I build at work using previous versions of RS.

Chapter 9  – This chapter discusses the various rendering formats that you can export your reports to.  A good discussion of what will/won’t export from your report to another format.  Easy, short chapter.

Chapter 10 & 11 – In this part of the book you will learn all about working with the Report Manager.  How to upload reports, set security, schedule reports to be run, is all discussed in these two chapters.  I’ll be honest, I just skimmed these chapters since I work in Report Manager several times a week.  I will come back to review the part on Data Driven subscriptions, that’s new to me.  If you need to administer the reports you create, make sure to read these chapters, if this is new material for you.

Chapter 12 – The final chapter. Whew!  All about customizing Reporting Services.  With a part on editing the RSReportServer.Config file (be careful!!!) and a short list of best practices.

All in all a good book.  Best for those folks just starting out with Reporting Services.  For those who all ready have some experience with RS, it can be a little tedious at times to go through exercises that include tasks that you already have done many times.  Here is the publisher’s web site for the book:  Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services 2008.

Happy Reading!

I’ve installed both RS 2000 & RS 2005 on various desktops and laptops in the past with no problems, so I figured getting RS 2008 up and running would be no big deal.  But I did run into a little problem along the way.

After the install, I tried to navigate to the Report Manager home page and I was greeted with a login box:

Hey I’m a local admin, I don’t need to log in. What gives!  So I scratched my head for a bit and then fired up Google.  But the information I found didn’t help me much. I tried several suggestions such as changing the account that RS Service runs in.  No luck with that.  Finally  I found a some help in one forum post (located at an MSND forum) that suggested changing the intranet security settings.  I wasn’t sure if it would work because I was on a different version of Windows (XP vs.. Vista), and they described a somewhat different set of problems, but I figured it was worth a try.  After some trial and error I put my URL in the allowed sites box, and it worked!

The link above gives the step by step for solving this, but here are some pictures showing what I did to fix the problem:

First go to Tools, Internet Options, Security Tab. Click on Local Intranet.

Then click on the “Sites” button to bring this screen up.

Click on the Advanced button and enter the URL in the “Add websites to this zone” box.  Click Add.

Click Close or Ok to back out of the boxes.  Refresh your screen and you are done!  Report Manager should appear now.