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SQL Reporting Services Expanded Through Add-on Packs

Microsoft extended the usefulness of its SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services by making available three Report Packs, which are collections of report templates for specific Microsoft applications.

The initial set of Report Packs are for Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft CRM and a sample financial database. The packs were posted on Tuesday to support an announcement on Wednesday at the Microsoft SQL Server PASS Community Summit.

SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services is a free add-on for licensed users of SQL Server 2000. The set of services was released in January, and Microsoft has served up 100,000 downloads of the technology from its site.

The Exchange Report Pack, available here, provides 13 canned reports and a sample database to help developers visualize and author managed reports for e-mail administration.

Some of the pre-packaged reports show the largest folders, which users are sending the most e-mail, which users are receiving the most e-mail, which users are sending out the largest e-mail files and what keywords are most common in company e-mail.

The CRM Report Pack, available here, is a set of six reports and a sample database based on Microsoft Business Solutions CRM version 1.2.

Some of the reports to help developers support key sales activities include doughnut charts of revenue grouped by account, industry, salesperson or territory; detailed account information for a single customer or groups of customers; a chart of customers in the pipeline; and a lead summary.

A Financial Reporting Report Pack, available here, contains six reports for a sample financial database called FinSampleDB.

Reports include a balance sheet, an income statement, a check of the double-entry system and a budget variance.

Along with announcing the Report Packs, Microsoft said the next version of Microsoft CRM will include a native version of Reporting Services. "In the next version of Microsoft CRM, they're actually going to have a reporting capability within the application which is leveraging reporting services. In that case, you don't have to have a separate SQL Server. It's just part of the application," said Alex Payne, senior product manager for SQL Server.

About the Author

Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.

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