SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

In this post, I will explain SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a server-based scalable and extensible platform for authoring, deploying, executing and managing reports based on a variety of data sources. SSRS is a set of ready-made tools, that helps you to create, deploy and manage reports. SSRS allows to create rich formatted reports in various formats like Tabular, Graphical, free-form or Interactive from various data sources with rich data visualization includes Charts, Maps or sparklines. SSRS reports can be exported in various formats like Excel, PDF, word etc.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is developed by Microsoft and is part of Microsoft SQL Server services. SSRS itself is a website that hosts these reports and can serve them to users through a web interface, or can schedule them for delivery over e-mail. SSRS reports can be viewed in a web browser.

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a competitor to Crystal Reports. It's a way of defining reports, just like Crystal Reports, and an engine for running those reports. SSRS uses XML based report file format whereas crystal report uses binary format. SSRS is more stable and certain design tasks can be done easily by editing XML.