Create a Pie Chart Report in Reporting Services
Objective and Business Scenario
In the following
sections, we will perform the steps required to create a pie chart report to
meet a business need as expressed by a hypothetical group of organizational
information consumers. We will base our report datasets on the AdventureWorks2000
sample OLTP database that accompanies the installation of Reporting
Services.
For purposes of our
practice procedure, we will assume that information consumers within the Purchasing
department of the AdventureWorks2000 organization have expressed the
need for a pie chart report. The consumers have stated that they intend to use it
within various other Microsoft Office applications, including PowerPoint
presentations, Word documents, and, ultimately, within other reports. They
need a report that presents the concentration of our organizational vendors, by
state, for numerous analytical ventures. To begin, however, they are
interested in only three states: Washington, California, and Oregon. These states, they tell us,
contain the lion's share of our vendors.
Once we understand the
business need, we begin the process of creating the chart report to satisfy the
information consumers.
Considerations and Comments
The
report that we will create involves the sample MSSQL Server 2000 database, AdventureWorks2000,
which accompanies the installation of Reporting Services. At the time of writing, the
Service Pack 1 update is assumed for Reporting
Services and the related Books Online and Samples.
For purposes of this
exercise, we will create a Reporting Services project within the Visual
Studio.Net 2003 Report Designer environment, within which we will work primarily
with a Chart data region. While the construction of a pie chart is
simple enough to follow, ensure that you have the authority, access and
privileges, within both MSSQL Server and Reporting Services, needed
to establish a data connection and accomplish the process and that performing
these operations within the AdventureWorks2000 database presents no
other issues in your environment.
If the sample AdventureWorks2000
database was not created as part of the initial Reporting Services
installation, or was removed prior to your beginning this article, please see
the Reporting Services documentation, including the Installation Notes,
for the procedure to create the database, and direction to the appropriate
files. As of this writing, a copy of the samples can be obtained from the
installation CD or via download from the appropriate Microsoft site(s).
Hands-On Procedure
Preparation
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
the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 shortcut in the Programs
group, as appropriate.
The
equivalent on my PC appears as shown in Illustration 1.
Illustration 1:
Beginning in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 ...
3.
Select File
--> New from the main menu.
4.
Click Project
from the cascading menu, as shown in Illustration 2.
Illustration 2:
Selecting a New Project
The New
Project dialog appears. We note that Business Intelligence Projects
appears in the Project Types tree, indicating an installation of Reporting
Services (the folder was added by the installation of Reporting Services,
as it established the Report Designer in Visual Studio .NET).
5.
Click Business Intelligence Projects in the Project Types tree, if necessary.
6.
Click Report
Project in the Templates list.
7.
Navigate to a
location in which to place the Report Project files.
8.
Type the
following into the Name box, leaving other settings at default:
RS008
The New Project
dialog appears, with our additions, as shown in Illustration 3.
Illustration 3: 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 4.
Illustration 4: The New
Project Appears in the Solution Explorer
We
have now created a Report Project, and are ready to proceed with creating
the new report.
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