CHAPTER 6 BUILDING REPORTSTo take full advantage of the flexibility of SSRS and the report design environment of BIDS, let’s
create the same report from scratch.
Figure 6-3. Report generated from the Report Wizard
Building Reports from Scratch
When working with a blank report, the first decision will be to choose which data regions to use in the
body of the report. This decision is driven mostly by the type of data you are working with and by the
report audience. For example, a chief executive officer (CEO) might not be concerned with details,
preferring to see summary information about the status of the business products and services, and
therefore would be more inclined to view a matrix report with column and row totals. However, in the
initial report, you will be working with the Table data region because you want to show the
interrelationships between patients and employees with multiple groupings in tabular rows, not
columns. The final modification to the report that you will build in this chapter will include column and
row groupings to show you how to incorporate elements of the Tablix data region.
In this section, you will follow specific steps to get your report to a basic starting point by adding a
Table data region, and then you will continue to add formatting and functionality. When you are
finished, the report will contain many SSRS features, including interactive drill-down and navigation
links, custom formatting, interactive sorting, populated drop-down parameters, and a chart that
displays the top ten diagnoses by cost. You will finish the report by adding several design touches, such