Practice
Preparation: Set up the Reporting Services
Environment
For purposes of our
practice session, we will create a copy of the Foodmart Sales sample report
(one of several report samples that are available for installation with Reporting
Services). I often use a "clone" of an existing sample report in
my Reporting Services articles because creating a fresh
report in each article would mean spending a great deal of time in preparation
before getting to the subject matter upon which the article focuses. In
addition, creating a clone of the report means we can make changes to our
report while retaining the original sample in a pristine state - perhaps for
other purposes, such as using it to accompany relevant sections of the Books
Online, and other documentation, in learning more about Reporting
Services in general.
Before we can work
with a clone of the Foodmart Sales report, we need to create a Reporting
Services project in the Visual Studio.Net 2003 Report Designer
environment. Streamlining, and then making the enhancements to the report to
add the functionality to support the subject of our lesson, can be done easily
within the Reporting Services Report Designer environment. Working
with a copy of the report will allow us the luxury of freely exploring our
options, and leave us a working example of the specific approach we took, to
which we can refer in our individual business environments. If you already
have a project within which you like to work with training or development
objects, you can simply skip the Create a Reporting Services Project section.
If the sample FoodMart
2000 Analysis Services database or the Foodmart Sales report was not
created / installed as part of the initial installation of the associated
application, if either was removed prior to your beginning this article, or if
either or both applications have yet to be installed, etc., see the respective Books
Online or other documentation for the necessary procedures to prepare
for the exercises that follow.
Create a Reporting Services Project
To
begin, we will launch Reporting Services' Report Designer, found in Microsoft
Visual Studio .NET 2003.
1.
Click Start.
2.
Navigate to,
and click, the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 shortcut in the Programs
group, as appropriate.
The
equivalent on my PC appears as depicted in Illustration 2.
Illustration 2: Beginning in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
2003 ...
Visual Studio .NET 2003 opens at the Start
page.
3.
Select File
--> New from the main menu.
4.
Click Project
from the cascading menu, as shown in Illustration 3.
Illustration 3: Selecting a New Project
The New
Project dialog appears. Business Intelligence Projects appears in
the Project Types tree, indicating an installation of Reporting
Services.
5.
Click Business Intelligence Projects in the Project Types tree, if necessary.
6.
Click Report
Project in the Templates list.
7.
Type the
following into the Name box, leaving other settings at default:
MDX_DRILLTHROUGH
8.
Navigate to a
location in which to place the Report Project files.
The New Project
dialog appears, with our input, as depicted in Illustration 4.
Illustration 4: The New Projects Dialog, with Addition
Our
new project appears in the Solution Explorer (upper right corner
of the Visual Studio .NET interface), as we see in Illustration 5.
Illustration 5: The New Project Appears in the Solution
Explorer
Having
created a Report Project, we are ready to proceed with creating
the new report clone.
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