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Chapter 55: Authoring Reports in Reporting Services
55
Designing the Report Layout
The Report Designer contains a rich feature set for designing reports. This section discusses
the basics of report design and demonstrates creating a report design, grouping and sorting
data, and adding data visualizations to a report.The Design tab in the Report Designer contains rich features to make formatting even the
most complicated reports possible. The page layout contains three sections: header, body,
and footer. Table 55-3 summarizes the behavior and purpose of each section. Designing
the report layout is similar to working with Windows Forms. Report items are added by
dragging them from the Toolbox onto the report.TABLE 55 -3 Report SectionsSection Description
Header By default, content in the header appears on every page. This is a good place to
include the report title to indicate why the report exists. The PrintOnFirstPage
and PrintOnLastPage properties can be used to prevent the header from
appearing on the fi rst and last pages.
Body If the report contains parameters, it’s a good idea to add a section to the top or
bottom of the body to show the value of the parameters used to execute the
report, and perhaps a short description of what the report represents. Adding
this detail at the top or bottom of the body ensures that the information is printed
only once, rather than on every page.
Footer Like the header, the footer also appears on every page by default and can be
turned off for the fi rst and last pages. This is a good place to include information
specifying who ran the report, when he ran it, the report version, and page
numbering.Choosing a Report Type
The Tablix data region replaced Table, Matrix, and List regions, but Table, Matrix, and
List are still available as templates from the toolbar. For instance, a List can be nested
under a matrix region. In SSRS 2005, these would have been using separate schemas,
but now they both use the Tablix schema, even though they affect the data layout
differently.A matrix report is sometimes referred to as a tablix, and you have developed a report using
the matrix already in this chapter. Matrix reports enable grouping (and therefore aggregat-
ing) on columns and rows, and enable variable numbers of columns and rows. Tables are
desirable for displaying data that would easily fi t into an Excel workbook, as in a set num-
ber of columns and a variable number of rows. Lists are great for free-form visualization
of data. Any item available can be dragged onto a list, such as images and charts. Lists are
great for nesting forms, such as rows under other Report Parts.c55.indd 1251c55.indd 1251 7/31/2012 10:28:07 AM7/31/2012 10:28:07 AM
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