What is SSRS? (SQL Server Reporting Services)

SQL Server Reporting Services provides a full range of ready-to-use tools and services to help you create, deploy, and manage reports for your organization. Reporting Services includes programming features that enable you to extend and customize your reporting functionality.

Reporting Services is a server-based reporting platform that provides comprehensive reporting functionality for a variety of data sources. Reporting Services includes a complete set of tools for you to create, manage, and deliver reports, and APIs that enable developers to integrate or extend data and report processing in custom applications. Reporting Services tools work within the Microsoft Visual Studio environment and are fully integrated with SQL Server tools and components.

With Reporting Services, you can create interactive, tabular, graphical, or free-form reports from relational, multidimensional, or XML-based data sources. Reports can include rich data visualization, including charts, maps, and sparklines. You can publish reports, schedule report processing, or access reports on-demand. You can select from a variety of viewing formats, export reports to other applications such as Microsoft Excel, and subscribe to published reports. The reports that you create can be viewed over a Web-based connection or as part of a Microsoft Windows application or SharePoint site. You can also create data alerts on reports published to a SharePoint site and receive email messages when report data changes.