Advanced Reporting Design Techniques and Capabilities \\ Speaker - Thierry D'hers

• Here are some notes that i made while watching this session 
•  
• The table wizard works really well, and makes applying macros like "sum" or "average" to columns very intuitive.
• Ribbon interface is a good idea, still not as easy to use as Office
• Something I liked was when you are in a table in SSRS the ribbon changes to options for a table, same with a chart
• SSRS will try to autolayout when you generate the report, sometimes can do a very poor job, so its not really WYSIWYG
• Again more talk about pagination rules being respected, although not that big of a deal since pdf output still looks horrible.
• Stepped layout in a table looked good, easy to setup as well.
• SSRS Charts had a background gradient like in excel, looked really slick
  • Although you only have a set number of color schemes to choose from
• Supports SQL Server Spatial Data
  • Stores shapes in sql
  • Used for maps
• Map wizard renders map from SQL - PROGRAM CRASHED
  • Tries 2 more times and CRASHES BOTH TIMES
  • Of course no line number with the error messages
• Bing layer on maps is cool
• Overall the maps looked awesome even though he was incapable of creating one from scratch
• The way they do 'Report Parts' is really easy to use
  • Searchable
  • Drag and Drop
  • Shows small preview of component
  • Stored on sharepoint, so reports get updates when report parts change
• SSRS crashed sharepoint
• Overall it was a great demo, SSRS has made some great improvements, although its clear there are a lot of problems still
  • SSRS crashed on my count around 5 times.
  • Keep in mind the person demoing the software is an absolute PRO who has been using this software for years
  • He is also involved in its development, so if he cant dance around a bug then I would suspect im in trouble.
  • There are still a lot of limitations to SSRS, which I will be talking about in an upcoming review.