Introduction

I still remember it was a neatly done report that got me my first pay raise.  Ever since, I am very passionate about report writing (every one likes a pay raise right?).  In this article, I will guide you through step by step on how to create a simple report using MS Reporting Services 2005; and host it with a Smart Client application.

So, are you ready to get your pay raise? Why not! Who knows, your neatly done report can just do that.

Prior to this article, I wrote three others, which were addressing different issues related to the reporting services.  However, all of them were targeted towards the intermediate-advance level audience.  From all the feedback I received, one was common, quite a few of you asked for an article which will be specially geared towards the novice-beginner level.

I assume the reader has a basic understanding of Visual Studio 2005 IDE and is comfortable with writing code using C#.  You don’t have to know MS Reporting Services to understand this article; although, any pervious experience with writing a report would help.

Although, I am calling this article 101, my intention is to adopt the applied approach rather then discussing each and every topic associated with reporting services.  I am touching the most common aspects of report design and I use the  most common controls.  I would strongly encourage you to go through the MSDN documentation for more detailed information.

Conclusion

Although, I tried to keep the language of this article as simple as possible; please feel free to get back to me if you need any further clarification.  I consider myself a budding author; I have to learn a lot; it is the reader like you, who has always helped me to improve my writing. I am looking forward to receive any comments/suggestion you have for me. Thank you for reading; I sincerely hope this article will help you a bit or two to know reporting services better through my applied approach.