PASS Summit 2003 - Day 3 - Reporting Services
Went to two sessions on Reporting Services for SQL 2000 today. This looks like it will really be a great tool. Gordon Mangione announced that the developers are targeting to have it out by the end of the year, and he said to expect it around "December 60th". (No that's not a typo. This is why Gordon makes a good keynote speaker).
Reporting Services is included under your SQL Server license (as long as it's installed on your SQL Server machine). I'll do a second post on this when I'm in better condition to type coherent thoughts, but I'm really liking what I see here. But, I'll bet Crystal Decisions (makers of Crystal Reports) and other report writers (like Lockwood Tech, maker of SQLWebReports) will be none too happy about this. You will need some (any) version of the Visual Studio 2003 IDE in order to use their Report Designer tool, but according to one speaker that even includes the $80 version of VB.NET. There is no doubt that Microsoft is taking reporting services seriously. In the Intro to Reporting Services session I went to, the speaker had a slide dedicated to "Key Differentiators" or, in other words, "what makes us better than the other guys".
Okay, so how cool is this? For attending PASS, we were each given a copy of Windows Server 2003 with 25 CALs, the Yukon Beta 1, and Reporting Services Beta 2. Hmmm... that's everything you need (except the computer to put it on) in order to get up and running with Reporting Services right now. Must be time to go shopping for a new box for testing purposes...