322 B u s i n e s s I n t e l l i g e n c e w i t h M i c r o s o f t O f f i c e P e r f o r m a n c e P o i n t S e r v e r 2 0 0 7
through the process of picking a data source, constructing a query, and then building
the report. It even applies some nice color and font formatting to the final report. In this
case, however, the walkthrough will show everything being done manually??”since all
reports will eventually have to be edited manually anyway??”and this will give you a
feel for how the process works. Instead of clicking on Add New Report, the developer
can click on Add, then New Item, and from the dialog box that appears, choose Report
(not Report Wizard, which is the default). The report should be given a meaningful
name and once it??™s created, it will appear in the Visual Studio work area.
There are three tabs in the main work area of a report: Data, Layout, and Preview.
A new report will default to the Data tab, since no data has yet been accessed for
this report. The Dataset drop-down box is blank and dropping the list down shows
only New Dataset. It is important to note for any .NET developers that the dataset
mentioned here is not the same as an ADO.NET Dataset, and while similar in
concept, they really have nothing in common.
Choosing New Dataset opens the Dataset dialog box, shown in Figure 10-4.
A name will be assigned to this dataset though, unlike many names in Reporting
Services, this one cannot contain blanks. The dataset will then be tied to a data
source.
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