Datasheet

Part I: Getting Started

Approximate

Percentage

Role Description

15% Business Managers Those who working seriously with Reporting

Services, having attended classes or engaged in

consulting services. They are mainly interested in the

bigger picture: how reports can address their

analytical needs and help them make informed

decisions. They have little interest in the

implementation details or the technology used to

make it work. They direct people who can do the

detail work.

15% System Administrators Consists of server system builders, hardware

professionals, and database administrators. In smaller

organizations, they often share with the software

developer and are typically concerned with the setup

and ongoing maintenance of servers and the

infrastructure to keep reporting solutions available

and working. They typically spend their time and

energy managing security and optimizing the system

for efficiency.

20% Software Developers To achieve advanced reporting features, software

developers write complex queries and custom

programming code to process business rules and give

reports conditional formatting and behavior.

Developers typically feel right at home with the

report design environment because it ’ s very similar

to familiar programming tools.

50% Business Information

Workers

The people in this role have strong computer user

skills, but they don ’ t spend their time writing code

and using tools like Visual Studio, Enterprise

Manager, or SQL Server Management Studio. They

need to design reports to run their businesses.

Wait a minute! This is a book about creating reports to display information in meaningful and interesting

ways. I can ’ t just display this information in a boring list, so I ’ ve created a simple report and put it into a

chart (an exploded, semitransparent doughnut chart, to be specific), shown in Figure 1 - 1 .

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