Integrating Reporting Services into Applications
SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) is an open and extensible reporting platform designed to provide developers with a comprehensive set of APIs for developing solutions built on Reporting Services.
There are three options for integrating Reporting Services into custom applications: the Report Server Web service, also known as the Reporting Services SOAP API, the ReportViewer controls for Visual Studio 2005 and URL access. Each option provides a different approach for integrating Reporting Services into your applications.
Reporting Services Web Service
The Reporting Services Web service is the primary interface for developing against Reporting Services. Whether you are developing code to manage your report catalog or developing code to render reports to a supported format, the Web Service exposes all the necessary methods to integrate Reporting Services into you applications. An example of one such application is Report Manager, which ships with Reporting Services; it uses the Web Service for managing the report catalog.
ReportViewer Controls for Visual Studio 2005
The ReportViewer controls that ship with Visual Studio 2005 are used for integrating report viewing into your applications. There are two controls: one for Windows Forms-based applications and one for Web Forms applications. Each control provides the capability for viewing reports that have been deployed to a report server as well as the ability to render reports that exist in an environment where a report server has not been installed.
URL Access
URL access is another option for integrating report viewing into your applications if the ReportViewer controls are not an option. For example, if you are developing applications that use a version of the Microsoft .NET Framework that shipped prior to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or an application developed with unmanaged code, you'll want to consider URL access for viewing reports. In addition to viewing reports within you application, URL access is useful for sending links to reports to users via e-mail.
In This Section
| Topic | Description |
|---|---|
Describes how to integrate Reporting Services report navigation and management into your existing business applications using the Reporting Services Web service. |
|
Integrating Reporting Services Using the ReportViewer Controls |
Describes how to integrate report viewing into your existing applications using the ReportViewer controls. |
Describes how to integrate Reporting Services report navigation into your existing business applications using URL access. |
See Also
Reference
Reporting Services Programming Reference
Other Resources
Report Manager
Reporting Services Programming
Report Server Web Service