A More Advanced Pie Chart for Analysis Services Data

This article examines additional capabilities we can employ in creating advanced Pie charts with Reporting Services. It extends the examination of simple Pie charts that we undertook in Simple Pie Chart for Analysis Services Data, and focuses on the creation of a somewhat more sophisticated Pie chart than we created in the earlier article, using dual category groups and a series group, among other nuances, again based upon an Analysis Service data source. This article continues the examination of Reporting Services charts for Analysis Services data sources that we began in an earlier article of my MSSQL Server Reporting Services series, Introducing Reporting Services Charts for Analysis Services. In that article we summarized the many different chart (or chart data region) types that are available, and looked ahead to individual articles surrounding each type, where we would specify details – and real world innovations – involving the use of each in reporting Analysis Services data. We noted that the focus of these related articles, interspersed among other topics within my MSSQL Server Reporting Services series over time, would be the design and creation of Analysis Services chart reports of various types, and the exploitation of the rich and flexible features contained in Reporting Services that enable us to make report data more meaningful, and easier to understand, from the perspectives of our information consumer audiences.

In many cases, which I try to outline in my articles at appropriate junctures, the functionality of well-established, but expensive, solutions, such as Cognos (PowerPlay, Impromptu, and other applications), Business Objects, and myriad other reporting / OLAP applications can be met by Reporting Services – at a tiny fraction of the total cost of ownership. And the flexibility and richness of the chart data regions alone in Reporting Services exceed, in many ways, the rather fixed options available in other enterprise reporting solutions.

As I have repeated in many of my articles in this column, one of the first things that become clear to “early adopters” of Reporting Services is that the “knowledgebase” for Analysis Services reporting with this tool is, to say the least, sparse. The vacuum of documentation in this arena, even taking into consideration the release of several books surrounding Reporting Services in recent years, continues to represent a serious “undersell” of Reporting Services, from an Analysis Services reporting perspective. I hope to contribute to making this space more accessible for everyone, and to share my implementation and conversion experiences as the series evolves. In the meantime, we can rest assured that the Analysis Services potential in Reporting Services will contribute significantly to the inevitable commoditization of business intelligence, via the integrated Microsoft BI solution.