Report Designer is a powerful report authoring tool that is hosted in the Microsoft Visual Studio environment. To build a report in Report Designer, create the report project, add data, and arrange the layout of the data and graphical elements. You can also add interactive features to your report and manipulate the output by using expressions. When the report is complete, you can use Report Designer to preview the report and publish it directly to the report server. 

When you create a report using Report Designer or another tool, you are actually creating a report definition. A report definition contains information about the data source, the structure of the data, and the layout of the data and objects on the report. A report definition is stored as a Report Definition Language (RDL) file within a Report Server project, which is included in a Visual Studio solution.

In This Section

• Getting Started in Report Designer
  Explains how to get started by creating or adding a report and discusses Reporting Services terminology and concepts. 

• Connecting to Report Data
  Describes how to create a data source definition and report dataset. Describes the various data source types supported by Reporting Services.

• Designing the Report Layout
  Describes how to work with data regions to arrange data and graphical elements on the report. Included in this section is information about formatting reports.

• Working with Report Data
  Describes how to work with data after it is retrieved from the data source, including filtering, sorting, grouping data in a report. Included in this section is information about using parameters and expressions to refine the content of your report.

• Publishing Data Sources and Reports
  Describes how to publish a data source or report to a report server.

• Viewing and Saving Reports
  Describes ways to view and save a report.

• Exporting Reports
  Describes available formats to which you can export a report.

• Printing Reports
  Describes how to print a report.

• Tutorials (Reporting Services)
  Provides several tutorials to help you learn how to design and implement reports.

See Also

Tasks

Concepts