CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING THE REPORTING SERVICES ARCHITECTUREFigure 1-2. The Web-based Report Manager application
Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) and SQL Server
Data Tools (SSDT)
The browser is only one of several clients that can use the SSRS Web service. In fact, BIDS is a client
when it interacts with the Web service to deploy reports and data sources. BIDS offers a graphical design
environment for report developers to produce the RDL files that SSRS uses for deploying and rendering
reports.
Note Because RDL is a defined standard, you can use any design application that supports the creation of RDL
files. Other third-party report designers are available, and many more are said to be in development.
By defining the base URL and folder name in a BIDS report project, you can deploy created RDL files
directly to the report server while in design mode. The base URL is of the form
http://Servername/ReportServer. If you have SSRS configured to run under a port other than the
default, 80, specify http://ServerName:PortNumber/ReportServer. We’ll cover the entire BIDS design
environment in Chapters 3-5, including most available report objects. We’ll also describe the RDL
schema that defines every aspect of an SSRS report. Figure 1-3 shows the BIDS design environment, also
called an integrated development environment (IDE), with a report loaded in design mode.