The different Wise Owl courses for Reporting Services explained
You can see our SSRS courses, manuals, exercises, venues and much more at our main Reporting Services training courses page. This page shows what you might expect to learn on our two SSRS scheduled courses:
| Course | Notes |
|---|---|
| Introduction to SSRS | A two-day course showing you how to create reports in SQL Server Reporting Services. |
| Advanced SSRS | A two-day advanced course, showing people who already know SSRS some extra tips and tricks (and in particular how to create custom assemblies in code, and how to link to them). |
Currently Wise Owl SSRS courses run in SQL Server 2016, which is almost identical to SSRS 2014, 2012 and 2008 R2 for the purposes of building reports (the web interface for viewing published reports is completely different, but using this constitutes only a very small part of the course).
Creating tables
On the introduction course you'll first learn how to create tabular reports:
A simple table, listing directors of films.
Grouping tables
The introductory course then shows how to create grouped reports, including using outlining:
A report showing films by country, with toggle items for the country name.
Expressions
The introductory course then shows how to create expressions or formulae in SSRS:
The difference is a calculated field, and the page header and footer include expressions.
One particularly nice feature shown on the introductory course is the ability to use the render format to show a report as an Excel workbook of separate named worksheets, with one sheet per group (for example, you could have each director's films on a separate worksheet within the same workbook).
Parameters
The introductory course shows how to create parameters (including dropdowns):
In this report you can choose any combination of directors using the multivalue dropdown, then choose a film and see its cast list.
Our advanced SSRS course shows how to create multi-value dropdowns based on stored procedures.
Indicators
Our introductory course then covers creating indicators and gauges:
Indicators are cool! Here they show the relative length of different films.
Matrices
The introduction course also shows how to create matrices (aka pivot tables):
A matrix showing the mean lengths of films by country and certificate.
Lists
Lists in SSRS are cousins of tables and matrices, and are covered on most introduction courses:
This list shows a table of the films made by each director, and also a chart.
Subreports
Subreports allow you to show parents and children together, and are included at the end of most introduction courses:
The subreport shows the films made by each director.
Advanced SSRS training
Our two-day advanced Reporting Services course covers:
- how to use stored procedures for reports (particularly for dropdown parameters)
- using variables in reports
- how to create custom assemblies and use these in your reports
- using bookmarks and document maps
- creating dynamic reports
As one example to whet your appetite, here's a dynamic chart:
You can choose what you want to chart using a dropdown! Here we're comparing the length of films by country.
If neither course is exactly what you're looking for, ask us about onsite SSRS training, or our SSRS report development service.