Reporting Services – A collection of work-arounds

If you have any reporting beyond trivial needs, I urge you to avoid Sql Server Reporting Services.  For example, if you want

  • A templating mechanism (like a “Master Page for reports”…Data Dynamics has this)
  • A Theming/styling mechanism
  • The need to have reports dynamically pull from different databases
  • The need to have available report parameter values dynamically pull from different databases
  • Need data items in headers/footers
  • Want a viewer that is’nt [broken and..] married to the workflow of creating reports
  • An API for the report definition language

Then go buy a solid reporting technology (some of this may be alleviated with Sql 2008, but many will not).  I suggest looking at Data Dynamics.