Making instant business decisions requires instant access to current relevant information, and IT department systems must deliver the right information to the right person at the right time. As you are aware, traditional systems that include system packages, third-party applications, and home-grown customized applications are addressed to particular needs and often tend to be expensive to develop, not user-friendly and time consuming. Microsoft has addressed this area in SQL Server 2000 by providing SQL Server Reporting Services as a comprehensive solution in the area of reporting, which includes authoring, managing and delivering reports that can be produced in paper, or in an interactive format by using web-based reports. For more information on SQL Server Reporting Services, you can download it from http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/trial.mspx.

SQL Server Reporting Services is server-based reporting platform that you can use to create and manage tabular, matrix, and graphical free-form reports from multiple data sources. One of the features of Reporting Services is that presentation processing occurs once the data is retrieved, enabling multiple users to review the same report simultaneously in formats designed for different devices.

SQL Server Reporting Services utilizes .NET technology to integrate a variety of heterogeneous data types to deliver information in variety of formats. Using this tool, developers can use Report Designer, with the help of Visual Studio .Net that works as a graphical tool by generating reports using the Report Definition Language (RDL) format which can be customized with any RDL-aware tool.

The Reporting Services layer runs as a middle-tier server, as a part of your existing server architecture. In order to install SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services, you need to have SQL Server 2000 installed for database activities, and Internet Information Services as a web server. The report server engine takes in report definitions, locates the corresponding data, and produces the reports. Using Reporting Services, you can interact with the engine through the web-based Report Manager, which also lets you manage tasks like refreshing schedules, along with notifications. In addition to the paper-format reports, end-users can view the report output from a web browser, and can export it to PDF, XML or Excel (viewed as static images) with a click of a button.

It is more than a year since Microsoft released SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. After extensive usage of Reporting Services, users have called for the features like end-user ad-hoc reporting. The release of SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services includes this highly anticipated functionality.You can consider Reporting Services 2005 as a new product because it's finally fully integration with SQL Server 2005 _ the platform it was originally paired with. Some of other features in this latest release are multi-value support for parameter selection, sorting of data in report, a new XML data provider that permits data access from a URL or Web services, and the addition of 64-bit support.

It is a standard phenomenon that most companies are accustomed to Microsoft Office tools, such as Excel and Word. As corporate business intranets grow, so does the need for the seamless management of data from Microsoft Office products. Developers are always on the lookout for products that enable them to create new and interesting .NET applications and clients are keenly looking forward for easy ways to access the end result in the form of reports using an integrated product.

The web browser has also become one of the most widely used mediums in commercial applications for the distribution of business reports users. There is no doubt this feature allows for scalability and, therefore, the same is required of web reporting solutions.

How about manipulating enterprise reports in the form of Word and Excel documents, with an enhancement of web-based reports where your employees and customers can access the data reports easily with a few clicks?

One such solution is provided by SoftArtisans' [http://www.softartisans.com] OfficeWriter for SQL Server Reporting Services, a server-side application integrated with .NET. It has been developed and designed to generate presentation-quality reports in native Excel and Word file formats that users can browse from a web browser.

Report generation has become a part most .NET applications, as the presentation of reports has been changed with the evolution of many third-party products, such as OfficeWriter. OfficeWriter report generation, in native formats, enables users to sort, manipulate, and alter spreadsheets and documents on their machine in the Microsoft Excel and Word environment that they are already comfortable with.

SoftArtisans OfficeWriter, which already sells as a reporting product that generates and delivers the reports in Microsoft Office formats, extends this functionality to support SQL Server Reporting Services. The Reporting Services-integrated product [http://officewriter.softartisans.com] is a web-based tool that opens, modifies, and delivers native Word and Excel documents as reports, over the web without having the need of Microsoft Office in a SQL Server environment.

OfficeWriter consists of the WordWriter and ExcelWriter components, which are also integrated with Reporting Services. The documents generated by OfficeWriter are in their respective native formats and they preserve all the features of the original product. The performance is not hindered when the usage of the reports is quite high with concurrent users.

The main advantage of OfficeWriter is that it can be used as a server-side application without having a need to install Microsoft Office on a server. The scalability of OfficeWriter can handle creating spreadsheets and documents for just a few users, or many users, while Microsoft Excel and Word only works well for a small number of users. This feature can be noticed when multiple users want to view same spreadsheet or document simultaneously. The ability to avoid installation of Microsoft Office on a server can spare server resources, which are best used when multiple users are accessing the applications at the same time.

Finally, on the aspect of licensing, if you are going to handle Microsoft Office on the server, all of the clients that access spreadsheets or documents from the server will require a Microsoft Office client license. Microsoft has already advised that it is impossible to run Office Web Components on a server that is accessible to users on an enterprise-wide network. Whereas OfficeWriter, hosted on the server-side, does not require a Microsoft Office client license, and it is valid to use free programs like Excel Viewer for spreadsheets or Quick View for documents.

By using OfficeWriter, the reporting format enables fully-functional design, publishing, and delivery of reports from Microsoft Excel and Word using SQL Server Reporting Services or .NET. This product preserves and maintains all of Excel's and Word's formatting and styles, including advanced features such as VBA and macros.

OfficeWriter gives you the ability to use all of Microsoft Excel's formulas and functions in spreadsheet reports. This simplifies web reports with the power of spreadsheet-style formulas. The amount of code required to write an impressive-looking report with OfficeWriter is minimal. Similar to an Excel application, you can create multiple worksheets and access their cells in the formulas, which will allow you to modify the visual aspect of reports.

Formatting can be added to a cell by setting font, horizontal alignment, locked, number, vertical alignment, and text wrap properties. This can also help to create styles that contain color, font and format options for use in multiple cell or ranges.

Pivot tables in Excel are an interactive way of representing a table that quickly combines and compares large amounts of data. You can rotate rows and columns to see different summaries of source data and display the details for area of interest. Using pivot tables, ExcelWriter allows the analyzing of related totals, especially when there is a long list of figures to sum and when you need to compare several facts about each figure. The interactive summary of table allows the user to change the view of the data where the spreadsheet is equipped with automatic calculations.

The following are the details about how to install of OfficeWriter on server and client sides.

Server-side installation requirements:

Installing OfficeWriter on a server is bit different compared to on the client. When you choose to run the automatic installer for OfficeWriter, copies of the OfficeWriter Assistant CAB files are placed in several locations on the server.

The DLLs are not registered on the server during the automatic installation because the objects do not need to be instantiated on the server. The DLLs are required for registration on any client machine that browses the OfficeWriter Assistant as samples on the server.

Manual installation of the OfficeWriter Assistant works as a client-side control, so there is no need to register the DLLs on the server. The DLLs are distributed to client machines in a CAB file format which is downloaded to the client by means of an <OBJECT> tag embedded in an HTML page.

Using the automatic installation, the screens guide the user to install OfficeWriter designer on the client, but you first need to close all Microsoft Office applications and double-click on Installer.exe file to follow the on-screen instructions.

MS Query is a part of Microsoft Office, but may not be installed by default. To install MS Query, you need the Office Installation CD ready and follow: