In this article describe the concept of SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). SSRS provides a full range of ready-to-use tools and services to help you create, deploy, and manage reports for your organization. Here, features of SQL server reporting services are given to understand.

Introduction

SSRS stands for SQL Server Reporting Services. SQL Server Reporting Services provides a full range of ready-to-use tools and services to help you create, deploy, and manage reports for your organization. Reporting Services includes programming features that enable you to extend and customize your reporting functionality.

Reporting Services is a server-based reporting platform that provides comprehensive reporting functionality for a variety of data sources. Reporting Services includes a complete set of tools for you to create, manage, and deliver reports, and

APIs that enable developers to integrate or extend data and report processing in custom applications. Reporting Services tools work within the Microsoft Visual Studio environment and are fully integrated with SQL Server tools and

components. 

Features of SSRS

Here is a concise list of SSRS features:

Manageability

Reporting Services is easy to deploy and manage. In addition to having a

convenient web-based management interface, both deployment and

management of Reporting Services can be scripted.

Security

Reporting Services keeps corporate data secure. Reports and information are not

accessible, unless sufficient privilege is granted to a user.

Programmability

Reporting Services allows developing of a custom functionality that can be

embedded in a report, called from a report, or scripted.

Reporting controls and wizard

Windows and web-based ReportViewer controls are supplied with Visual Studio 2008. Report controls simplify adding reporting functionality to Windows and web-based applications.

Extensibility

Reporting Services allows adding new server functionality. RDL is an XML-based language and is designed to be extensible. SSRS also allows for extending data-processing, data-rendering, and data-delivery extensions with your own custom implementations.

Scalability

Reporting Services Enterprise Edition supports large workloads and high volume reporting. Support for web farms in Enterprise Edition allows easy scale out, providing an ability to add extra capacity as needed. In addition, Enterprise Edition scales up, supporting more than two CPUs.

Availability

Web farm support of Reporting Services Enterprise Edition paired with the Reporting Services catalog installed on a SQL Server 2008 cluster enables high availability reporting solutions.

Data-driven subscriptions

Reporting Services Enterprise Edition allows customers to dynamically change the recipient list, report parameters, and processing options. In contrast, Standard Subscription, available in Standard Edition of Reporting Services, is for a single predefined user and single predefined parameter set. 

SSRS vs Crystal Report 

Web Based Reporting Server Report Rendering Engine supports a number of formats (Excel, HTML, Image, and more) Publishing and scheduling is a part of Reporting Services. In crystal you need Crystal Reports Server or Business Objects Enterprise for Publishing and scheduling. Or you would need to create your own custom app) Parameter prompting is nicer in my opinion Saved Data sources can be accessed by excel users. User login a permissions are built in. Subscriptions are a built in feature. 

•    SSRS is tabled-base design pattern but in CR (crystal report) you can place objects everywhere freely.
•   Export to Excel in SSRS works better than CR, CR will disappoint you to use this future.
•  CR have several options to manage your sections for example(underlying following section) is very useful but there is no such an option in SSRS, and many more options in CR for Page Managements.
• CR has Client Side Report Creation API (CRAXDDRT) which can let your customers modify and create new Reports.
• CR using Formula in C and basic and SSRS using Expressions.
•  SSRS is very compatible with SharePoint list and can create reports based on Lists.
•  Cross Tables in CR vs Matrix Reports in SSRS.
•  Both of them support OLAP Connections.

Conclusion

I hope this might be helpful to understand the SSRS and features of SSRS, and also

describe the SSRS vs crystal report in this blog. Thanks!