MOSS & SQL2k5 SP2 = :D

When I did a POC for a customer with MOSS and Excel Services where I demo'd the capability of Excel 2007 being used as a BI reporting tool and that this new type op report could be stored onto a sharepoint site where the users who did not have Excel2007 (or any version of Excel for that matter) could see and interact with the report like they would with a reporting server report. During that demo I 'livesearched' ;) on webparts for reporting server to show the customer that previously build reports using reporting server could also be shown. Unfortunatly during that time (couple of weeks ago) there were no reporting server webparts available for MOSS. The only thing that was available was a CTP of SP2 for SQL2k5. Again it was unfortunate because the software was running on 64bits hardware and there were no plans about releasing 64bits CTP versions for SP2.

Today I read some exciting news on the Sharepoint teams blog and instead of copy and pasting the whole post I recommend you read it yourself on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 SP2 Reporting Services integration with WSS 3.0 and MOSS 2007!

Well ok.. a short summary:

• Single consistent user interface for managing and viewing reports.
• A much richer user experience.
• Storing reports in Office SharePoint Server 2007 document libraries. This allows a report to use standard Office SharePoint Server 2007 features, such as workflow, versioning, and collaboration.
• Reports and all associated resources are stored within the Office SharePoint Server 2007 database and are automatically synchronized with the same reports that are stored and executed from the report server. Scheduling, caching, and subscriptions are stored in the report server database only because this functionality is not available natively in a SharePoint document library.
• Single security model for reports because they are treated like any other document inside a SharePoint document library.
• Common report filtering paradigm that is used in SharePoint document libraries and filtering Web Parts.

Special report integration in reports library list:

• Edit in Report Builder – Reporting Services functionality to launch the Report Builder tool to edit the definition of the report (see Figure 6). Report Builder enables end-users to easily modify or create reports and publish them to the Office SharePoint Server 2007.
• Delete – Standard Office SharePoint Server 2007 functionality to delete the document from the document library.
• Manage Subscriptions – Reporting Services functionality to add, edit, and delete report subscriptions. Users that subscribe to reports can automatically be notified when data changes in reports. For example, sales people can subscribe to a report to automatically receive their weekly sales figures via email.
• Manage Data Sources – Reporting Services functionality to select a shared or custom data source for the report. Shared data sources enable one data source definition to be used across multiple reports.
• Manage Parameters – Reporting Services functionality to manage the values and prompts for all parameters passed into the report. Parameters are a way to limit the data that is displayed in a report. For example, a report parameter named Year can be specified to limit the report data to the selected year when the report is run.
• Manage Processing Options – Reporting Services functionality to choose processing and snapshot options and timeouts. Snapshots and timeouts affect the performance of the Reporting Services server. It is important to consider these options to keep the server performing as well as possible.
• View Report History – Reporting Services functionality to view the history of report processing.

So it's totally brilliant! No more that (lousy) user interface of reporting server. It's all integrated in Sharepoint :)