The book explains reporting services architecture and business intelligence, and it teaches the fundamentals of designing reports through using careful planning considerations. The authors cover advanced report design and filtering techniques, and they categorize common report types and lead the reader through each design, discussing its purpose and the conditions where it could be more efficient. Building on the first edition, there is more coverage for the professional developer and, of course, coverage of the new features introduced with SQL Server 2005.  Feedback from readers in the first edition confirmed that there are two distinct audiences:  the casual report designer and the serious solution developer, and both of these groups will benefit by a distinction in the related material in the book. 

There are many caveats to designing advanced reports in Reporting Services that aren’t clear in the report designer interface or help documentation.  The authors provide the necessary guidance to work through these challenges, and they discuss lessons learned over the past year as this product and its user community has begun to mature.

New topics will include features added to the product in SR2 and SQL Server 2005.  These include:

• Client-side printing support
• WinForm report viewer control
• WebForm report viewer control
• The ActiveViews client-side report enhancement

In the introductory chapter, there is a short section on the feature differences between SRS 1 for SQL Server 2000 and SRS 2 for SQL Server 2005.  There is also discussion about upgrading versus installing the new product from scratch. There is a chapter dedicated to planning and designing security.  In the Yukon release, there are three different approaches to rendering reports, and these topics will be covered thoroughly using scenarios and walkthroughs.