Query Design Tools in Reporting Services

Reporting Services provides a variety of query design tools that you can use to create queries in Report Designer. The kind of data that you are working with determines the availability of a particular query designer. In addition, some query designers provide alternate modes so that you can choose whether to work in visual mode or directly in the query language. This topic introduces each tool and describes the type of data source each one supports. The following tools are described in this topic:

• Generic Query Designer
• Graphical Query Designer
• Report Model Query Designer
• MDX Query Designer
• DMX Query Designer

All of the query design tools run in the data design environment of Business Intelligence Development Studio when you work with a Report Server project template or Report Server Wizard project template. For more information about working with the query designers, see Defining Report Datasets.

Generic Query Designer

The generic query designer is the default query building tool for most supported relational data sources, including Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, OLE DB, XML Web services, and ODBC. In contrast with the graphical query designer, this query design tool does not validate query syntax during query design. The generic query designer is recommended for creating complex queries, stored procedures, querying XML data, and for writing dynamic queries.

The following image provides an illustration of the generic query designer after the query is defined and the rowset is returned. The toolbar provides options for switching to the graphical query designer, running the query, refreshing the pane, and managing the dataset:

For more information, see SQL Server Query Designer User Interface.

Graphical Query Designer

The graphical query designer is a query design tool used in several Microsoft products and in other SQL Server components. It provides a visual design environment for selecting tables and columns. It builds joins and the Transact-SQL statements for you automatically when you select which columns to use.

The following image provides an illustration of the graphical query designer. To use the graphical query designer, you must toggle the generic query designer button on the Report Designer toolbar:

For more information, see SQL Server Query Designer User Interface.

Report Model Query Designer

The Report Model query designer is used to create or modify queries that run against a report model that has been published to a report server. Reports that run against models support clickthrough data exploration. The query determines the path of data exploration at run time.

To use the Report Model query designer, you must define a data source that points to a published model. When you specify the data source, the Report Model query designer opens in Data view so that you can create the semantic query. The Report Model query designer can be used in graphical or generic modes. You can toggle the generic query designer button on the toolbar to switch modes. For more information, see How to: Create a Report Model Data Source (Report Designer).

The following image provides an illustration of the Report Model query designer in design mode:

For more information, see SMDL Query Designer User Interface.

MDX Query Designer

The MDX query designer is used for creating queries that run against an Analysis Services or other multidimensional data source. This query designer becomes available when you create a dataset in Report Designer that uses an Analysis Services or SAP NetWeaver BI data source. The following image provides an illustration of the MDX query designer after the query and filter are defined. You can use the toolbar to switch query modes and languages, and configure options on the query:

For more information, see Analysis Services MDX Query Designer User Interface and SAP NetWeaver BI Query Designer User Interface.

DMX Query Designer

You can use the DMX query designer to retrieve data from a data mining model. To use this query designer, you must have an Analysis Services data source that includes a data mining model. After you select the model, you can create data mining prediction queries that provide data to a report. For more information about this query designer, see Using Analysis Services DMX Query Designer.

For more information, see Analysis Services DMX Query Designer User Interface.

See Also

Tasks

How to: Create or Edit a Report-Specific Data Source (Report Designer)
How to: Create or Edit a Shared Data Source (Report Designer)

Concepts

Reporting Services Component Overview
Connecting to a Data Source
Defining Report Datasets
Defining Report Datasets for Analysis Services Multidimensional and Data Mining Prediction Data
Data Sources Supported by Reporting Services
Working with Report Model Query Designer
Report Designer

Other Resources

Reporting Services Tutorials

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance

Change History

Release	History
14 April 2006	New content: DMX query designer. Links to query designer help topics.