May 13, 2008 at 8:54 am
I would second Jeff's suggestion of views with the getting of external data in excel. Here we use that scheme heavily, our report users demand the ability to sort, copy, paste, use formulas and generally do what they like with the "result" data. (Someday I will get them to understand we can start with the data in the form they are manipulating it too...someday..) But I drift...
Yes, getting the ODBC connections can be a problem, we happened to roll out the reporting to small groups over time, so setting up 5-10 connections at a time was not much of an issue.
Assuming your multi page excel reports all point to the same, or few data pages within the document, pulling the data in from a view works well. There is even withing the properties on the external data query a check to refresh on open, as well as removing the data before saving. If the views are designed well, a user will likely notice only a few seconds of lag when opening the sheet. With the data removed on save, the file size drops (was a huge plus here once long ago), also if your using windows authentication, the views will only execute for those with permission to do so, and if you don't have permission, the report is blank.
Hmm, I am likely overly fond of this solution, however, until the admin is on board with reporting services, this works. (And hey, I use excel as the display layer, when I do get to reporting services, all the views and such are already made.)
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