A conceptual question about RS (when is it usefull)

In my department we are trying to benefit from the RS: we create a lot of
reports for the Marketing, and generally supply them through an Excel
spresdsheet:
1. Ad hoc reports with data which won't be updated.
2. Reports connected to views which are updated once they are oppened by the
user (=the Excel spredsheet is oppened).
3. Reports connected to tables which are daily updated (if the view is to
heavy).
In all the three situations, the RS doesn't help us.
I guess this tool is usefull for information departments who want to publish
reports to many subacribers at once
or to subscribers who need a "hard copy" of the report (=to print it)
or for interactive reports in which the user has to choose values (a year or
a customer or a product) and we don't want to write code.
Am I right?
Any comment or suggestion will be wellcome!RS is not excel and Excel is no RS. You have gotten used to Excel for
reporting and that is fine but it seems to me that you are approaching this
specifically from the viewpoint of a spreadsheet. If you look at what RS can
do you will find that you will be designing reports in a whole new way.
You say that RS doesn't help you. If you are already really skilled in Excel
and want to keep doing things the way you are then fine. It seems to me you
have already made your decision.
Some capabilities of RS:
1. You can schedule long running reports to run at a certain time, then the
user will use that snapshot.
2. Lots of caching configurations you can do
3. Drill through. This is huge. Instead of one mega report, put the data
they need and then provide links that pull up additional information in
reports passing the parameters to the report.
I'm not sure why you say RS doesn't help you in the three items you list.
Seems like it does for #3 for sure. Perhaps #2 as well.
As far as interactive reports, you can set defaults so the user doesn't have
to make a decision but can change it if they want to.
--
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services
"Geri Reshef" <GeriR@.Dubek.co.il> wrote in message
news:%23NwTAWI%23EHA.3260@.TK2MSFTNGP14.phx.gbl...
> In my department we are trying to benefit from the RS: we create a lot of
> reports for the Marketing, and generally supply them through an Excel
> spresdsheet:
> 1. Ad hoc reports with data which won't be updated.
> 2. Reports connected to views which are updated once they are oppened by
the
> user (=the Excel spredsheet is oppened).
> 3. Reports connected to tables which are daily updated (if the view is to
> heavy).
> In all the three situations, the RS doesn't help us.
> I guess this tool is usefull for information departments who want to
publish
> reports to many subacribers at once
> or to subscribers who need a "hard copy" of the report (=to print it)
> or for interactive reports in which the user has to choose values (a year
or
> a customer or a product) and we don't want to write code.
> Am I right?
> Any comment or suggestion will be wellcome!
>