SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is Microsoft's primary technology for delivering standard reports. As mentioned in the previous chapter, these types of reports typically contain a well-defined output that is known and developed by a member of the IT department ahead of time and delivered on a recurring basis to facilitate the regular daily, weekly, and even monthly decision-making needs of the business.

One of the great capabilities of SSRS is the fine-grained control it allows users over visualizations, layout, parameterization, and extensibility, providing for a level of customization that simply can't be matched by any other reporting tool in the Microsoft stack. In fact, it is this ability of control and customization that also makes SSRS well suited for the development and delivery of complex dashboards and scorecards, even though there are arguably more suitable tools (for example, PerformancePoint) for this purpose when requirements are more...