Enhancing the Foodmart Sales Report to Include Ad Hoc Sorting
In
this section, we will copy the existing Foodmart Sales report, and then
open it in Reporting Services' Report Designer, where we will begin the
modifications that the information consumers have requested.
Create
a Copy of the Foodmart Sales Report
As we
have noted, we will be working with a copy of the Foodmart Sales report,
to keep the original sample intact for easy access and use at another time.
1.
Right-click
the Reports folder underneath the newly created shared data source, in
the Solution Explorer.
2.
Select Add
-> Add Existing Item from the cascading context menus that appear, as
depicted in Illustration 20.
The Add
Existing Item - RS017 dialog appears.
When we installed
Reporting Services, the default installation point for the sample report files
was the Samples folder within the Reporting Services program
folder. A common example of this default path is as follows:
C:\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL\Reporting Services\Samples\Reports
3.
Using the Add Existing Item - RS017 dialog, navigate to the location
of the sample reports in your own environment.
An
example of the Add Existing Item - RS017 dialog, having been pointed to
the Samples folder
(which contains the Foodmart Sales report we seek), appears as partially shown in Illustration 21.
Illustration 21:
Navigating to the Sample Reports Folder ...
4.
Right-click
the Foodmart Sales report inside the dialog.
5.
Select Copy
from the context menu that appears, as depicted in Illustration 22.
Illustration 22: Performing
a Quick Copy of the FoodMart Sales Report
6.
Within the Add Existing Item - RS017
dialog, navigate to
the RS017 folder we created earlier, when we added the new RS017
project.
7.
Right-click
somewhere in the white space inside the RS017 folder, within the dialog.
8.
Select Paste
from the context menu that appears, as shown in Illustration 23.
Illustration 23: Select
Paste to Complete Copying ...
A copy
of the Foodmart Sales report appears within the dialog.
9.
Right-click
the new file.
10.
Select Rename
from the context menu that appears.
11.
Type the
following name in place of the highlighted existing name:
Ad Hoc TopBottomFoodmart Sales.rdl
NOTE: Be sure to include the .rdl extension in the file name.
The renamed
copy of the Foodmart Sales sample report appears as depicted in
Illustration 24.
Illustration 24: The New Report File,
AdHoc_TopBottomFoodmart Sales.rdl
12.
Select the new
file by clicking it, if necessary.
13.
Click Open
on the dialog box to add the new report to report project RS017.
AdHoc_TopBottomFoodmart Sales.rdl appears in the Reports folder,
within the RS017
project tree in the Solution Explorer, as shown in Illustration 25.
Illustration 25: The New Report Appears
in Solution Explorer - Report Folder
Having
created a copy of the functional report, we are now ready to make the
enhancements requested by the FoodMart Marketing Department information
consumers.
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