Introduction to SQL Azure Reporting Services

Microsoft SQL Azure Reporting provides a complete, cloud-based platform designed to support a wide variety of reporting needs enabling organizations to deliver relevant information where needed across the entire enterprise. Now developers can deliver highly visual, interactive reports as an integrated part of a Windows Azure-based solution.

Overview

Microsoft SQL Azure Reporting provides a complete, cloud-based platform designed to support a wide variety of reporting needs enabling organizations to deliver relevant information where needed across the entire enterprise. Now developers can deliver highly visual, interactive reports as an integrated part of a Windows Azure-based solution. There’s no need to install your own Reporting Services instance or apply software updates, because SQL Azure Reporting runs as a highly available cloud service. Best of all, SQL Azure Reporting is based on SQL Server Reporting Services, so you can build reports using the same familiar tools that can be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

Objectives

In this hands-on lab, you will learn how to:

• Create a SQL Azure data source and data set for a report.
• Add a table to a report.
• Work with report item properties to customize the report appearance.
• Add expressions to calculate values to be display in the report.
• Deploy the report in SQL Azure Report Server.
• Embed the SQL Azure report using the ReportViewer control.

Prerequisites

The following is required to complete this hands-on lab:

• Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
• Microsoft.NET Framework 4
• SQL Server Data Tools (included in SQL Server 2012 RC0 Express with Advanced Services)
• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.6
• Created SQL Azure Server

Setup

In order to execute the exercises in this hands-on lab you need to set up your environment.

1. Open a Windows Explorer window and browse to the lab’s Source folder.
2. Double-click the Setup.cmd file in this folder to launch the setup process that will configure your environment and install the Visual Studio code snippets for this lab.
3. If the User Account Control dialog is shown, confirm the action to proceed.
4. When prompted, enter you SQL Azure Server name and your administrator user and password. The script will create the AdventureWorks database in your server.

Using the Code Snippets

Throughout the lab document, you will be instructed to insert code blocks. For your convenience, most of that code is provided as Visual Studio Code Snippets, which you can use from within Visual Studio 2010 to avoid having to add it manually.

If you are not familiar with the Visual Studio Code Snippets, and want to learn how to use them, you can refer to the Setup.docx document in the Assets folder of the training kit, which contains a section describing how to use them.

Exercises

This hands-on Lab includes the following exercises:

1. Designing and Deploying a Sales Report
2. Accessing the Sales Report from a Windows Azure Application

Estimated time to complete this lab: 30 minutes.