What is SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)? Your Comprehensive Guide

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a robust, on-premises reporting platform that empowers you to create, deploy, and manage paginated reports with ease. Designed to deliver the right information to the right users, SSRS is a key component of the Microsoft SQL Server suite, catering to organizations that require detailed, formatted reports. If you’re looking to understand what SSRS is and how it can benefit your business, you’ve come to the right place. You can download the latest version, SQL Server 2022 Reporting Services, directly from the Microsoft Download Center to get started, followed by a straightforward installation process.

Are you perhaps interested in Power BI Report Server? While related, it’s a different product. For information on that, please refer to our guide on What is Power BI Report Server?. This article focuses specifically on SQL Server Reporting Services.

Key Capabilities: Create, Deploy, and Manage Reports Seamlessly

SSRS excels at providing a streamlined workflow for report creation, deployment, and management. It ensures that users receive the necessary data in a format that is both accessible and insightful. Reports can be conveniently viewed directly in a web browser on desktops or mobile devices, or delivered straight to inboxes via email subscriptions.

The current SSRS suite offers a range of updated features and product categories, including:

Paginated Reports: These are the cornerstone of SSRS. They allow for the creation of pixel-perfect, formatted reports ideal for printing or generating documents like PDFs. Recent updates bring a modern aesthetic and enhanced functionality to paginated reporting.
Modern Web Portal: The web portal serves as a central hub for organizing and displaying your paginated reports and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Accessible via any modern web browser, it also provides storage for Excel workbooks, creating a unified content repository.
Mobile Reports: In today’s mobile-first world, SSRS provides the capability to create reports with responsive layouts. These reports automatically adjust to different screen sizes and orientations, ensuring optimal viewing on tablets and smartphones.

Diving Deeper into Paginated Reports

Paginated reports are designed for scenarios where precise formatting and print readiness are paramount. Think of documents like invoices, transcripts, or financial statements. These reports are structured for a fixed layout, making them perfect for exporting to formats like PDF and Word, ensuring that the report looks exactly as intended regardless of the viewing medium.

Creating sophisticated paginated reports is facilitated by two powerful tools:

Report Builder: A user-friendly, standalone tool designed for business users to create and edit reports with a drag-and-drop interface. You can install Report Builder to start building reports quickly.
Report Designer in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT): For developers and advanced report creators, Report Designer, integrated within SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT), offers a more comprehensive environment for complex report design and development. Learn more about designing paginated reports with Report Designer.

Recent updates have modernized the paginated report experience, introducing:

Refreshed Styles and Color Palettes: Give your reports a contemporary, clean look with updated default styles.
Enhanced Parameter Pane: Gain greater control over report parameters, arranging them intuitively for improved user interaction.
PowerPoint Export: Export your reports directly to PowerPoint, preserving live, editable visualizations for dynamic presentations.
Hybrid Power BI and SSRS Integration: Bridge the gap between SSRS and Power BI by pinning visuals from your SSRS reports to Power BI dashboards. This allows for a consolidated view of key metrics from both platforms.

Mobile Reports for On-the-Go Insights

Mobile reports address the evolving needs of data consumption in a mobile world. Traditional fixed-layout reports are often cumbersome to view and navigate on tablets and smartphones. They are inherently designed for larger, landscape-oriented PC screens, which contrasts sharply with the smaller, portrait-first nature of mobile devices.

SSRS mobile reports overcome this challenge by utilizing responsive layouts. This responsiveness ensures that reports adapt seamlessly to various devices and screen orientations. Built upon technology from Datazen (a platform acquired by Microsoft), mobile reports guarantee that your data visualizations appear optimally, regardless of where they are accessed. If you have existing Datazen reports, the SQL Server Migration Assistant for Datazen simplifies the process of migrating them to Reporting Services.

The Mobile Report Publisher app is the tool for creating these dynamic mobile reports. Whether your users are on Windows, iOS, Android, or accessing reports via HTML5, they can access data from Power BI, cloud sources, or SSRS itself through the Power BI mobile apps.

A unique feature of Mobile Report Publisher is its real-time sample data generation during report creation. This allows you to immediately visualize how your data will appear within different visualizations, helping you select the most effective data representations.

The Modern Web Portal: Your Central Reporting Hub

The web portal is the entry point to Reporting Services, representing a significant modernization of the classic Report Manager. This redesigned portal provides a central location to access all your SSRS reports and KPIs. KPIs are particularly useful as they can surface key business metrics directly in the browser, providing at-a-glance insights without needing to open a full report.

Built as a sleek, single-page, HTML5 application adhering to web standards, the web portal ensures broad browser compatibility. It functions seamlessly with major browsers like Microsoft Edge, Internet Explorer (versions 10 and 11), Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

Content within the web portal is logically organized by type, making navigation and discovery intuitive:

Paginated reports
KPIs
Excel workbooks
Shared datasets
Shared data sources
Mobile reports

Security and organization are maintained through a traditional folder hierarchy for content storage and management. Users can also tag favorite reports for quick and easy access. For users with appropriate permissions, the web portal also provides administrative capabilities for managing SSRS content, scheduling report processing, enabling on-demand report access, and managing subscriptions to published reports.

For a deeper understanding of the web portal, consult our dedicated guide: The web portal of a report server – SSRS Native mode.

SharePoint Integrated Mode for Collaborative Reporting

SSRS also offers the flexibility to publish reports in SharePoint integrated mode. This integration leverages SharePoint’s collaborative features, allowing for report processing scheduling, on-demand access, subscription management, and export capabilities to formats like Microsoft Excel, all within the SharePoint environment. Furthermore, you can set up data alerts on reports published to SharePoint, receiving email notifications when underlying report data changes, facilitating proactive data monitoring.

To explore the benefits of SharePoint integration in detail, see Reporting Services report server in SharePoint integrated mode.

Extending SSRS with Programming Features

For organizations with advanced reporting needs, SSRS provides robust programming features to extend and customize reporting functionality. The SSRS APIs enable developers to integrate and extend data and report processing within custom applications. This opens up possibilities for tailored reporting solutions that precisely meet specific business requirements.

Learn more about the developer capabilities of SSRS in the Reporting Services developer documentation.