Reporting Service Components Overview

Sql Reporting Service is a set of processing components,tools and programmatic interfaces that supports the development and use of rich reports in a managed environment.The tool set includes development tools, configuration and administrative tools, and report viewing tools.Programmatic Interface include Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), URL end points and Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) for easy integration with new or existing applications and portals.

Architecture Diagram:

Report Server : 

Report Server is the main component of Reporting Services. The report server implemented as a Microsoft Windows Service and as a Web service that provides an optimized and parallel processing infrastructure  for processing and rendering reports.The web service exposes a set of programmatic interface that client application can use to access the report servers. The window service provides initialization, scheduling and delivery services and server maintenance. The service work together and constitute a single report server instance.

Report Server has the sub components. Those are Processor and Extensions. According to Processor are the hub of report server. The processor support the integrity of the reporting system and can not be modified or extended. Extensions are also processors, but they perform very specific functions. Through its sub components, the report server request and makes reports available for On-demand access or schedule distribution.


Report Builder:
Report Builder is one of the tool to create a reports like table, matrix or chat reports. user report layout template that contains predefined data regions and select a predefined report model, which contains the report items such as a data fields, then drag and drop report items onto the data regions with in the template.1The report model contains all of the information required for report builder automatically generate a query to retrieve the request data . Using Report Builder user can find the data that is related to the content in their report, add text and formatting, create new fields and calculations based on the data in the report model, and preview, print and publish their reports.


Report Designer:

Report Designer is a collection of design surface and graphical tool that are hosted with in the Microsoft Visual Studio environment. Report designer provides tabbed views of data, Layout and preview that allow you to design  a report interactively.Report Designer supports tabular, matrix or free form reports. Tabular and Matrix reports also known as Cross tab or pivot table reports, are easily created using the report wizard. Free form reports which can include tables, Matrices and charts are created using familiar  visual studio interface.


Model Designer :

Model Designer is a Reporting Services tool used within the Business Intelligence Development Studio to define, edit, and publish report models that are used in Report Builder. A report model is a business description of the underlying database. It describes the data in terms of entities, attributes, and relationships (roles), which can then be used by Report Builder users to help them build reports. The model describes the underlying database in familiar business terms that end-users can understand


Reporting Service Configuration Tool:

Use Report Services Configuration tool to configure a Sql server 2005 Reporting Services installation. If you installed a report server using the files-only installation option, you must use this tool to configure the server so that it can be used. If you installed a report server using default configuration installation option, you can use this tool to verify or modify the settings that were specific during steps.



Report Manager:
Report Manager is a web based report access and management tool that you have access through Microsoft IE. we can use Report Manager to perform the following tasks.

• View, Search  and subscribe to reports.
• Create secure and maintain the folder hierarchy to organize items on the server.
• Configure site properties and defaults.
• Configure Role Based Security.
• Configure report execution properties, report history and report parameters.
• Create a share schedule and share data source to make schedule and data source connections more manageable.
• create a data driven subscriptions that roll out reports to a large recipient list.
• Create a linked reports to reuse and re purpose an existing reports in different way 

Data Storage:

The report server is a stateless server that stores all properties, objects, and metadata in a SQL Server database. Stored data includes published reports, report models, and the folder hierarchy that provides the addressing for all items managed by the report server. A report server database can provide internal storage for a single Reporting Services installation or for multiple report servers that are part of a scale-out deployment

Extensions:

The report server supports custom authentication extensions, data processing extensions, report processing extensions, rendering extensions, and delivery extensions. A report server requires at least one authentication extension, data processing extension, and rendering extension. Delivery and custom report processing extensions are optional, but necessary if you want to support report distribution or custom controls.

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Security Extensions :

Security extensions are used to authenticate and authorize users and groups to a report server. The default security extension is based on Windows Authentication. You can also create a custom security extension to replace default security if your deployment model requires a different authentication approach (for example, if you require forms-based authentication for Internet or extranet deployment). Only one security extension can be used in a single Reporting Services installation. You can replace the default Windows Authentication security extension, but you cannot use it alongside a custom security extension.

Data Processing Extensions:  

Data Processing extensions are used to query a data source and return a flattened row set. Reporting Services uses different extensions to interact with different types of data sources. You can use the extensions that are included in Reporting Services, or you can develop your own extensions. Data processing extensions for SQL Server, Analysis Services, Oracle, SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, Hyperion Essbase, Teradata, OLE DB, and ODBC data sources are provided. Reporting Services can also use any ADO.NET data provider. Data processing extensions process query requests from the Report Processor component by performing the following tasks.

• Open a connection to a data source.
• Analyze a query and return a list of field names.   
• Run a query against the data source and return a rowset.
• Pass parameters to a query, if required.
• Iterate through the rowset and retrieve data.

Some extensions can also perform the following tasks: 

• Analyze a query and return a list of parameter names used in the query.
• Analyze a query and return the list of fields used for grouping.
• Analyze a query and return the list of fields used for sorting.
• Provide a user name and password to connect to the data source.
• Pass parameters with multiple values to a query.
• Iterate through rows and retrieve auxiliary metadata.

Report Processing Extensions:

Report processing extensions can be added to provide custom report processing for report items that are not included with Reporting Services. By default, a report server can process tables, charts, matrices, lists, text boxes, images, and other report items. If you want to add special features to a report that require custom processing during report execution (for example, if you want to embed a Microsoft MapPoint map), you can create a report processing extension to do so