Data-Driven Subscriptions: Introduction and a Scenario
As we
learned in the introduction to standard subscriptions in Managing Reporting Services: Report Execution and
Standard Subscriptions, when we establish subscription-based reporting, our designated report server uses information
that we provide it to schedule and deliver the report to designated individuals
in the organization, through the channels that we also specify. As we are
about to learn, Data-Driven Subscriptions are established as "standing
orders" to Reporting Services, just like Standard Subscriptions, to
deliver reports in one of two ways: a subscription is based upon either an event
or a schedule.
The
two subscription types share the same general purpose: to provide information
to organizational consumer(s) without requiring the targeted consumer(s) to
perform any action to obtain an updated report. This "push"
capability, in the context of the Data-Driven
Subscription, is useful
in establishing reporting based upon data, and other events, whereby a
designated user can be informed of the occurrence of the event with little
additional effort, freeing them to pursue other activities in the meantime. We
will focus on specification of scheduling report generation in our practice
exercise, but suffice it to say for now that Data-Driven Subscriptions,
just like their Standard Subscription counterparts, can provide highly
useful, automated delivery of updated information to intended consumers in a
reliable manner.
The
actual difference in how the two types of subscriptions operate lies largely in
the source of the "destination instructions." Standard Subscriptions,
whose delivery instructions are a static part of the report definition file,
are usually established and maintained by the information consumers for whose
benefit they are created. Data-Driven Subscriptions, on the other hand,
generate their subscriber lists, along with other delivery options, when they
are executed. They are typically created and maintained by Reporting
Services administrators and other operatives with familiarity in report
creation and operation.
Data-Driven Subscriptions allow us to determine to whom we
deliver reports at the runtime of the report. Delivery to a designated list of
subscribers, based upon the list itself, allows us a wide range of flexibility,
including customization of our information products for specified recipients at
report run time. An obvious benefit of having a list-based delivery mechanism
is that distribution of the report remains tied to a subscription list that can
change in composition on a regular basis. We might, as an example, leverage a Data-Driven
Subscription to deliver a weekly general ledger update to members of a
corporate accounting group, or to update personnel with approaching milestone
employment anniversaries that various election forms are due to the HR
department by a given date.
In Managing
Reporting Services: Report Execution and Standard Subscriptions, we explored Standard Subscriptions,
and performed a practical exercise in setting such a subscription in place to
deliver reports, via a file share, and in an MS Excel format. As we shall see,
the primary differences between a Standard Subscription and a Data-Driven
Subscription lie in the source of the subscription information that
is evaluated by the process. Whereas this information is largely fixed
for a Standard Subscription within the subscription definition,
the Data-Driven Subscription looks to both the subscription
definition (for the fixed facets) and a specified data source (for
the dynamic aspects) for its operational instructions.
The fixed instruction
elements of a Data-Driven Subscription consist of the following:
-
The specific
report that is subscribed;
-
Delivery
extension
information;
-
Subscriber
data external source connection information;
-
A query to
extract the dynamic data that drives the subscription.
The query returns
a rowset each time that the Data-Driven Subscription is processed. The
retrieved data supplies the dynamic components of the subscription, including
the:
-
Subscriber
list;
-
User-specific
delivery preferences;
-
Parameter
values, where appropriate.
Let's continue our
overview of the Managing phase, and get some hands-on experience with a Data-Driven Subscription. Because this article focuses on
management of reports that are already designed (and in keeping
with our objective to make articles "free-standing" with regard to readers
being able to participate in each without having joined us in previous articles),
we will continue to work with the set of report samples that accompany Reporting
Services.
The
Business Requirement
Before we begin building
the Data-Driven Subscription mechanism, which is really quite similar to
the steps we took for the Standard Subscription in Managing Reporting Services: Report Execution and
Standard Subscriptions, let's examine a hypothetical business
need to embed a degree of reality into the picture. Again, we will make the
requirement very similar to the requirement in our last article, so as to
emphasize likenesses, and distinguish differences, in a manner that makes the
concepts memorable.
We
will return, for purposes of illustration, to the business requirement in our
last lesson, to establish a subscription whereby we will "push" the FoodMart
Sales report to a designated group of information consumers. We will
assume again that, up until our establishment of the subscription, the report was
regularly distributed manually to users, by attaching the respective report
file to individual e-mails, and mailing these, once this was accomplished.
While
we might certainly take the existing e-mail approach in a more automated
scenario within either type of subscription (and, indeed, the documentation on
the circuit at this early stage in the life of Reporting Services has focused
exclusively upon this approach), we will again state that the information
consumers have requested that the report files be "parked" in a shared
folder that interested parties can access at will (this saves them from
having to refer to an e-mail at a later time, assuming that they are too busy
to review the report when it arrives in the in-box, as in the e-mail scenario.)
The members of the prospective audience tell us that the report would be most
useful, for purposes of analysis, as the specific type of file with which each
respective consumer has a fondness. The report, which will be the same as the
one we selected for the Standard Subscription, is parameterized, a fact
that we will leverage in our exercise, because the intended audience consists
of managers who are (again) concerned with how specific product families are faring
within the FoodMart chain, and have little interest in members of the other
product families. The ability to customize the selection parameter to
individual subscriber's needs presents a distinct advantage in using a
Reporting Services Data-Driven
Subscription.
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