Reviews for Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services: Essential Skills for Database Professionals

1. Solid real world examples, great technical overviews and clarity of content

   Rated 5 out of 5 stars, May 12st, 2008

   As a BI technical developer, with previously very little understanding for reporting services, this book has enabled me to gain, in a very short period of time, a solid understanding of SSRS.
   
   Brian Larson's book delivers clear technical overviews of real world, useful and practical examples. This book meets the needs of developers and users with varying skill levels in Reporting services; the book covers from basic to advanced topics in a gentle transition.
   
   Look out for the "Task Notes" feature for simple yet detailed explanations of scenarios/assumptions following various example reports.
   
   The only negative comment from me is the excessive and repetitive "Step-by-step" guide throughout the book. I suppose practical repetition is the key to learning!
   
   Go on and gain SSRS skills now! This book will help!
   
   

2. An almost excellent book - good for beginners.

   Rated 4 out of 5 stars, October 12st, 2007

   This is a well structured book with many, easy to follow, practical exercises for people who are starting from scratch with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. It covers all the basic reporting capabilities, the deployment and management of reports and the customising of Reporting Services. It also has three useful, interface reference appendices for Report Items, Web Servers and the Report Definition Language. A fourth appendix also deals with adhoc reporting.
   
   On the downside, there is no indication of the differences between the 2005 and 2000 versions of Reporting Services, therefore this book should not be bought by users who are already experienced with the earlier version.
   
   The biggest drawback is the accompanying database and code that has to be loaded from the publishers Web site. They appear to belong to an earlier version of the book. This means users have to subtract a couple of years from all dates used in the text and at least one report can't be built at all. This stops me awarding top marks to an otherwise excellent book.

3. Good introduction

   Rated 2 out of 5 stars, September 12th, 2006

   This book provides an example lead course in designing reports so it gives a good overview of what is possible. Unfortunately this approach means you know what to do to repeat the examples but do not fully understand why. I am finding the book hard to use as a reference as the indexing focuses on finding the examples rather than the techniques.