Report Builder 2.0 – Where is the Report Model?

I thought I’d write about this topic, even though it’s a bit of an old news item, because I keep getting questions about this when I visit clients. As part of the SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services product, many of us were really enthusiastic about the Report Builder tool. This tool enabled the organisation's power users to create their own custom-made reports, using a pre-defined Report Model. This Report Model was simply a logical “map” of specific database fields that the administrator wrapped inside this model, thus enabling the users to simply drag and drop them to their self-built reports. The users could then deploy their self-made reports onto the Reports Portal for everybody to use.

As part of the SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack, Microsoft released the Report Builder 2.0. Now, this stand-alone tool was a big enhancement to the previous version. It is basically a standalone report authoring tool, where the users can create their own reports, using an office-like interface. When I first used this tool, the first thing I noticed was that I didn’t have to use a Report Model in order to create a report. I could simply create my own data sources and my own queries and design and deploy the report, as if I was using the BIDS platform.

So, at this stage I thought: OK, this is a good option for database-oriented users, but what about the users that I want to restrict their access to the database and only provide them with a pre-defined set of database fields? I double-checked BOL, and it turns out you can either provide a Report Model or not, either way it’s fine. For the database-savvy and trustworthy users you can, as an administrator, grant access to the tables and let them create their own reports from scratch, including setting up the data sources and queries. For the users whom you want to limit access to the database, simply configure a data model for them to use. Both ways, the users will have to adjust to the new interface, which provides them with much more design capabilities than the Report Builder 1.0 tool. In my opinion, it’s as intuitive but gives so much more power to the user.

One more thing to note is that you can now launch the Report Builder tool from either the “Start-Programs” menu as a standalone application, or you can still (as in SSRS 2005) launch it from the Report Manager webpage. However, after you download and install the SQL Server 2008 feature pack and get the latest Report Builder 2.0 tool, when you try to launch the Report Builder from the Report Manager, you will still get the Report Builder 1.0 running, not the new version you have just installed. Check here, in BOL, to find out how to set the Report Builder 2.0 as the default ClickOnce option on the Report Manager page.

(This is post number 2 for week number 2 of my SQL blog challenge)