Microsoft, SAP, and Devexpress Reporting Services

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Microsoft, SAP, and DevExpress Reporting Services

Kory Watts

Computer Science

University of Wisconsin - Platteville

Abstract

Business intelligence is a critical part of any business and is a key factor in helping businesses measure goals as well as providing insight that may give the business a competitive advantage in its respective market. Business intelligence is the collection of information that a business can use to measure its goals and help plan for future strategies. In order to collect and analyze all of this information effectively a business person needs to have this information visible to him or herself in a manner that is timely and easy to comprehend. Reporting services provides this solution and is available through several different companies. In this paper I will thoroughly explain Visual Studio compatiblebusiness intelligence softwareprovided by Microsoft, SAP, and DevExpress.

Introduction

Businesses of all sizes have been using business intelligence solutions to make and measure decisions for over a decade.A large amount of data is available to a company at any given time; reporting services is a business intelligence solution that can harvest this data in a way that business people can understand. These solutions are abundantly available outside of development environments such as Visual Studio, but few are available inside as well as outside these development environments. In order for reporting service solutions to be successful data must be effectively stored, gathered, and implemented efficiently and effectively into reports for use by business people. A wide variety of companies provide business intelligence solutions, but this paper will discuss reporting services provided by Microsoft, SAP, and DevExpress.

Gathering Data

Detailed company data is stored in several databases. To make storage and retrieval much easier and efficient for business intelligence solutions many companies use a very large database structure called a data warehouseto store historical and current information from these databases. Data that is stored in these databases come from internal, primary, and secondary data sources.

Internal Data

Internal data is comprised primarily of sales data. Sales data comes from the companies accounting systems and the logs on their website. Website logs are populated by transactions that occur online. Sales data may be the largest sector of this data, but the most important is individual customer activity. Individual customer data consists of personal information, order history, and communication history. [5]

Primary Data

Information is not always available and people may need to go out and obtain it. Primary data is data collected for the first time and is usually collected by a business’s marketers. Collection of this data is done through techniques such as experiments, focus groups, observation, and survey research. [5]

Secondary Data

Data is available all over the place, but sometimes may not be within one’s company. Secondary data is data that has been collected by a different organization and used to serve a purpose within one’s own company. [5]

Report Types

Reports in reporting services have a wide variety of ways of being created and displayed. Not all reporting service solutions offer the same report type capabilities, but listed below are some of the common report types.

Drilldown

Drilldown reports (Figure 1)aim at minimizing the complexity of a report while allowing the user to view large amounts of data. To achieve this functionality the report is organized in a manner that allows the user to toggle conditionally hidden report items to control how much data is shown. All data must be loaded at once to use this type of report and may not be a good choice if there is a large amount of data. [1]

Drillthrough

Drillthrough reports (Figure 2) aim at allowing a user to retrieve extended data on desired objects. To achieve this functionality a report has links to other reports which have links to other reports and so on. Data is only loaded when a report is loaded so it is a good choice if there is a large amount of data. [1]

Subreport

Subreports (Figure 3) typically show data that is related to the data of the parent report. A subreport is a separate report that is embedded in the main body of another report. Both reports use their own data sources and therefore the report switches context for report processing between the reports. A report with several subreports may respond slower than normal and it is recommended to use drillthrough reports in these situations. [1]

History

History reports are a collection of snapshot reports. Snapshot reports are exactly what the name says, a snapshot of a report at a given time. History reports will show how the snapshot reports differ over a period of time. [1]

Cached

A cached report aims at eliminating the time the end user waits for the report to load. A report that contains a large amount of data can take a long time to load and is anundesired experience for the end user. Typically, users subscribe to reports so the report will load and be stored in the cache for instant access when the user opens it.[1]

Microsoft

About

Microsoft Corporation, headquartered in Washington, was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen when they created BASIC, the first computer language program for a personal computer, and sold it to their first customer, MITS. Microsoft rose to a dominate status in the computer operating system market in the mid-1980s with MS-DOS and started their Windows operating system line shortly after. Currently, Microsoft ranks number one on the 2012 FORBES Global 2000 Software and Programming list. Microsoft started small and now has eight business divisions including Online Services, Server and Tools, Microsoft Business, Microsoft Office, Interactive Entertainment, Windows Phone, Windows Live, and Skype.

Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) was first introduced in 2004 and is part of the Business Development Intelligence Studio which includes Reporting Services, Integration Services, and Analysis Services. SSRS is arguably the best reporting services solution compatible with Visual Studio.

Microsoft SSRS Benefits

Report Deployment

A report server or a SharePoint site is a necessary component for taking advantage of report deployment in SSRS. When a report is published to this server or site any user who has permission to the server or site can view the report. Deployment of a report server project allows forpublishingmultiple reports at a given time. Data-driven subscriptionis a report deployment feature available in select SQL Server editions that allows for automatic delivery of reports to specified users. Using data-driven subscription also allows for the setting of any report parameters and output format so that the end-user does not have to do anything besides view the report when it is delivered. [1]

Design Layout

SSRS uses a free-form layout (Figure 6) for report design which allows report designers to organize data display on the page that is not restricted by bands.This approach allows for the user to get a clear view of the report layout while it is being designed because it will appear exactly how it looks in the design. [4]

Documentation

Microsoft has always had extensive documentation on their products and SSRS is no exception. SSRS has a lot of underlying features that are very beneficial, but would be very confusing to figure out without the documentation and tutorials that Microsoft provides.

Tablix

The tablix control in SSRS, arguably it’s most powerful design tool, allows the designer to create reports that display data in cells in a rows and columns format. The cells of a tablix accept any report item from items as simple as a text box to more complicated items such as a chart or another tablix. The tablix control also allows the designer to apply grouping to data for better organization. [1]

Microsoft SSRS Drawbacks

Compatibility

If a company is interested in extensively using SSRS to its full capacity it is necessary to purchase SQL Server.This is especially true in the deployment of reports because you need a SQL Server to host the report server database. Microsoft has a way with incorporating products together to get the purchase of multiple products from one product. [4]

SAP

About

SAP is a multinational software corporation headquartered in Germany that specializes in business operations management and customer relations enterprise software. SAP was founded in 1972 by five former IBM engineers and was not until recently that it became a large player in the business intelligence scene with its acquisition of Business Objects in 2008 and Sybase, the largest business software and service provider specializing in information management and mobile data use, in 2011. SAP is currently the world leader in enterprise applications in terms of software and software-related services revenue and is the world’s third largest independent software manufacturer based on market capitalization.

Reporting Services

SAP offers extensive and state of the art business intelligence solutions. Crystal Reports is the reporting services business intelligence solution offered by SAP and is included in versions of Visual Studio prior to 2010. Crystal Reports have been available to Microsoft developers since the 1993 release of Visual Basic, but is not included in Visual Studio versions after 2008. However, SAP provides a download that enables developers to use Crystal Reports in Visual Studio 2010.

SAP Crystal Reports Benefits

Report Deployment

SAP provides multiple ways to publish reports to provide for needs of different users. In Crystal Reports, report files can be published as embedded or non-embedded. An embedded report file will be compiled into the assembly’s manifest and separate external report files do not have to be distributed. However, if a report needs to be modified the entire application will have to be recompiled and redeployed. A non-embedded report file is not compiled into the assembly’s manifest and is distributed separately from the application allowing for modification and redeployment without the recompilation and redeployment of the entire application. SAP also provides report hosting for reports created in Crystal Reports. With this service one can upload a report and specify users to notify and give access to when a report is uploaded or modified. [3]

SAP Crystal Reports Drawbacks

Design Layout

SAP uses a banded layout (Figure 5) for report design which allows report designers to organize data display for each band on a page. In design mode it is hard to tell what the layout of the report is going to look like and the designer has to constantly switch to the report preview to get a clear idea of the layout. This approach is confusing, limiting, and outdated. [4]

Documentation

SAPCrystal Reports documentation is not as easy to find or as friendly to use as documentation from Microsoft or DevExpress. The documentation is in PDF form which makes it slightly less navigable and readable than documentation contained on web pages. The only documentation available is for the Crystal Reports stand-alone version. The features of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio are very similar to those of the stand-alone version, but there are differences.

Ease of Use

When a Crystal Report is opened for creation there is a lack of clarity on what should be done to create the report (Figure 4). The banded report layout and the highly technical report creation options make report design difficult and reliance on anybody besides a techie to create a report in Crystal Reports would be a disaster at best.

DevExpress

About

DevExpress, a small privately owned business headquartered in California, was founded in 1998 and provides next-generation applications with existing technologies. Windows development is prevalent in today’s applications and .NET capabilities continue to expand, yet Microsoft stopped investing in Windows Forms over ten years ago. DevExpress has partnered with Visual Studio and provides extensions and additional capabilities to controls in Windows Forms, ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight, and Delphi VCL.

Reporting Services

The DevExpress suite for reporting services is called XtraReports and provides functionality across several platforms including Windows Forms, ASP.NET, WPF, Silverlight, and LightSwitch while being fully integrated into Visual Studio. This suite allows a developer to create reports or create an end-user designer that allows the end-user to create their own reports. [2]

DevExpress XtraReports Benefits

End-User Designer

The end-user form provided by DevExpress gives the end-user the capability to design or modify reports. The major advantage to this form is the option for customizing the form to the needs of the user as it is not likely that all features and capabilities that the user will need are included in the default form. The layout of this form (Figure 7) is a nice mix between the Microsoft SSRS and SAP Crystal Report solutions.One of the obstacles that reporting services faces in putting the report design and maintenance in the hands of the user is the required knowledge of data sources. Reports must be tied to data source(s) to display data and setting data sources and interpreting field names can be confusing to a non-techie individual. As stated, this form is customizable and a programmer could easily add any needed data sources and apply aliases to field names so that it is user friendly. [2]

Support/Documentation

The fact that DevExpress is a company that specializes in several other features other than reporting services comes with the added bonus of support and documentation. DevExpress has extensive documentation, tutorials, and a helpful support center. This feature is a compliment to the end-user designer because a user can view this documentation to gain knowledge of how to perform tasks in creating and modifying reports as well as make suggestions or ask questions of the support team.

DevExpress XtraReports Drawbacks

Setup

The goal of an end-user designer is to limit the amount of time developers are spending on reports. DevExpress provides this capability, but in exchange developers must spend a large amount of time preparing the report designer to meet the needs of the end user. Most of the components that the user will need are just drag and drop items from the toolbar, but special functionality options must be programmed by the developer. This large amount of development may be a deterrent to some, but the capabilities may be an attractant for others.

Deployment

DevExpress does not provide any built in deployment features for their reporting services solution. All report files are saved in .repx format, a format specific to DevExpress reports, and can be exported to a wide variety of file extensions such as .pdf and .html. Anything more than saving these reports and exporting them to different file formats is completely up to the developers. [2]

Conclusion

Businesses of all sizes have been using business intelligence solutions to make and measure decisions for over a decade. A large number of these businesses are using stand-alone reporting services solutions, but there are also quite a few that use reporting services built into Visual Studio. SAP and Microsoft both provide stand alone versions of reporting services and these can be used to enhance their Visual Studio versions of reporting services. Although SAP does not provide the very best Visual Studio compatible reporting service solution they are one of the world leaders in business intelligence solutions. DevExpress is known more for their development tools rather than their reporting services, but they do provide a nice option of customizability. In order for reporting service solutions to be successful, data must be effectively stored, gathered, and implemented efficiently and effectively into reports for use by business people.

Appendix

Figure 1: Drilldown report

Figure 2: Drillthrough report

Figure 3: Subreport

Figure 4: Crystal Report ease of use

Figure 5: Crystal Report banded layout

Figure 6: Microsoft SSRS free-form layout

Figure 7: DevExpress XtraReport end-user designer

References

[1]Reporting service (ssrs). (n.d.). Retrieved from

[2]Xtrareports. (n.d.). Retrieved from

[3]Sap crystal reports, version for visual studio. (n.d.). Retrieved from

[4] Bischof, B. (2005).Sql server reporting services and crystal reports: a competitive analysis. Retrieved from

[5]Strauss, J., & Frost, R. (2012).E-marketing strategy. (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Pearson.