SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - Pros and Cons

Question

I am developing a web application using ASP .NET 2.0, VS 2008 and SQL Server 2005. I would like to Use SSRS 2005 for the various reports I need to build for this web application. I would like to convince the team that we should adopt SSRS as the main reporting platform for most internal and external web applications we have.

What are the pros and cons of Reporting Services? I can see many pros like tight integration with IIS, SQL Server and Visual Studio, rich presentation features and export functionality, subscription etc so I am mainly interested in negatives of SSRS.

EDIT: I understand that if I am not using VS 2005 for my application development, I will be using different Visual Studio versions for application and report development. However, I am more interested in negatives (or not so good aspects) of SSRS itself.

Answer 1

I know you said 2005, but I will put in notes around 2008 as well.

SRS Pros:
- It is free (provided you have the SQL server license)
- Tight data integration with SQL Server, but it handles anything .NET can (Oracle, ODBC etc...) just fine. (2008 has native support for Terradata too)
- Components for Visual Studio, SharePoint and PerformancePoint all exist to make it easy to leverage it. It is just a web app though so integration into any web page or app that can talk to a web server is easy too.
- Built in tools to do subscriptions (i.e. emails that get sent out on a regular basis to a list of people with the report on them). The list of recipients can be static people or a sharepoint site or a dynamic list of people (pulled from a DB) (08 adds support for dynamic to sharepoint too)
- 3rd party vendors exist to enhance the product
- Export to a variety of formats (XML, CSV, Excel, PDF etc...)
- Ability to design templates which power users can use to build reports without knowing SQL (since the SQL is contained in the template). Power users use a special report builder tool which is delivered via click once.
- Works differently to Crystal reports (I don't like Crystal thats why this is a pro for me)

SRS Cons:
- Charting controls look like Excel 2003 and are limited. (2008 has the Dundas controls in by default so they are much more powerful, more varied and better looking)
- Kerberos issues due to it being a web app can cause annoying problems (2008 removes that as it is no longer an IIS web app. It runs it's own web server based off the IIS core but is closer to a stand alone app - so the security issues aren't a problem)
- Designer support is a pain. 2000 Reports must be developed in VS 2003, 2005 reports must be developed in VS 2005, 2008 reports must be developed in VS 2008. By Visual Studio I mean the normal one or the thin downed version you get with the SQL Management tools.
- Compatibility. Each version of reporting services can run only the current version and one version back of the reports.
- Security is limited to Integrated Windows or Anonymous (2008 has added support for forms based security and for custom providers, like you get with ASP.NET)

Answer 2

One of the Cons I see with your setup, is you will have to use Visual Studio 2005 for your reporting project since you are using SSRS 2005.

Since it looks like you are using Visual Studio 2008 for your other development, this means having both versions installed and having to have both open and running most the time.

I'm in the same situation and it is a hassle, but one I've gotten used to.

EDIT:
Some of the other Cons I've run across are usually designer related. They may have been fixed in 2008 (don't know for sure), but I attribute them to the infancy of SSRS compared to other more mature reporting solutions.

• Datasets changing to Text even though you set them to Stored Procedure every time you enter the data tab

• Web Service datasets losing their parameters when changing the query

• The expression editor is very dumbed-down. Its slightly better than using notepad.