Building Dynamic SQL Reports with SSRS Note from the Data Whisperer
By Tom Nonmacher
With the proliferation of data across various industries, there is an increasing demand for professionals who are adept at creating dynamic SQL reports. SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) offers a wide range of tools for creating, managing, and delivering dynamic reports with data from SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Azure SQL, and Azure Synapse. In this blog post, we will guide you through building dynamic SQL reports with SSRS.
Before we begin, it's important to understand that SSRS is part of the Microsoft SQL Server suite. It provides a comprehensive reporting platform that includes an array of tools and services to help you create, deploy, and manage reports for your organization. You can also use it to create tabular, matrix, graphical, and free-form reports from relational, multidimensional, and XML-based data sources.
To create a dynamic report, we first need to connect SSRS to our data source. Here is an example of how to establish a connection with a SQL Server 2019 database using T-SQL:
USE [master]
GO
CREATE LOGIN [SSRSUser] WITH PASSWORD = 'Pa$$w0rd'
GO
USE [YourDatabase]
GO
CREATE USER [SSRSUser] FOR LOGIN [SSRSUser]
GO
GRANT SELECT ON [YourTable] TO [SSRSUser]
GO
After establishing the connection, we can now create a data-driven subscription. This is a type of subscription that will use query parameters to fetch data. The following is a sample T-SQL query that creates a subscription:
USE ReportServer
GO
EXEC CreateDataDrivenSubscription 'YourReport', 'YourDataSource', 'SELECT * FROM YourTable', 'YourDeliveryExtension', 'YourSettings', 'YourParameters', 'YourTriggerInfo'
GO
SSRS also supports MySQL 8.0, DB2 11.5, Azure SQL, and Azure Synapse as data sources. For MySQL, you can use a similar approach to SQL Server for creating a data source. For DB2, you'll need to use the IBM DB2.NET data provider. Azure SQL can be accessed using the Microsoft SQL Server data provider, while Azure Synapse can be accessed using the Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics data provider.
Building dynamic SQL reports with SSRS is a powerful way to present data in a way that's meaningful to your organization. By connecting SSRS to various data sources like SQL Server 2019, MySQL 8.0, DB2 11.5, Azure SQL, and Azure Synapse, you can leverage your existing data infrastructure to create comprehensive reports that provide valuable insights.
We hope this blog post helps you in your journey to becoming an SSRS expert. Stay tuned to SQLSupport.org for more tips, tricks, and guides on working with SQL and related technologies.