RSS Feed (xml)
In SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) 2005, you have controls like the Textbox, Table, Matrix and Chart to display data. In the case of SSRS 2008, you have additional controls like the Gauge and Tablix. Now here comes the million dollar questions - Are you satisfied with the available controls in SSRS? Do you think that you need additional controls? Do you think you need more features for the available controls?
Dundas, which is third party reporting tool, now has support for SSRS 2005. There are four reporting controls available, Dundas Chart for Reporting Services, Dundas Gauge for Reporting Services, Dundas Calendar for Reporting Services and Dundas Map for Reporting Services.
This article provides an overview of the Dundas report control features; basically what the Dundas report controls can do for you. A point to remember is that this article does not tell you how you can configure Dundas Reports as this is a topic for another article.
You will need to install these four controls separately. After installation these controls will be added to the SSRS tool box as illustrated below:
Only the Dundas Map for Reporting Services is created under the Dundas Report items group while all the other three controls will be created in the standard Report Items group.
New Charts for Your Reports
First lets look into the dundas charts which can be found in the Dundas Report item group. Charts are one of the most used controls due to the fact that charts are a lot easier to read than tables or matrix.
With SSRS 2005 you have a chart control with several options - Column, Bar, Line, Pie Scatter, Bubble, Area, Doughnut and Stock. Although there are several charts options available there are several chart types which are not available out of the box with SSRS 2005. I will describe these chart types which are available with the Dundas controls.
Pareto Chart
Pareto Chart is a tool for business statistics. A Pareto chart consists of a sorted column chart along with a line chart that displays a running sum of the percentages of each sorted item in a series.
Polar Charts
The polar chart type is a circular graph on which data points are displayed using the angle and the distance from the centre point. Polar charts are commonly used in astronomical science.
Pyramid Chart
A pyramid chart is used to display data that adds up to 100% and like pie and doughnut charts, the Pyramid chart does not use a categorical axis.
Step Line Chart
A step line chart is similar to a line chart, but it does not use the shortest distance to connect two data points. Instead, the step line chart uses vertical and horizontal lines to connect the data points in a series forming a step-like progression.
Gantt Chart
The Gantt chart displays separate events that have beginning and end values. These charts are excellent for planning the use of resources, and data can be plotted using a date-time scale or a numerical scale.
Box Plot Chart
The Box Plot chart type consists of one or more box symbols that summarizes the distribution of the data within one or more data sets. A Box Plot chart displays a rectangle with whisker lines extending from both ends. This type of chart is used by statisticians.
Another important feature is that the ability to convert SSRS charts to Dundas Reports. You can right click the SSRS charts and select the convert option. Because of this, if you want to convert your SSRS chart to Dundas charts, you don’t have to have start from the beginning and it will reduce the development time.
Gauges
Gauges are very important in Reporting. Although gauges are missing in SSRS 2005, you can find gauges in SSRS 2008. In fact, most of the features supported by Dundas Gauges are available with the SSRS 2008 gauge controls. There are several types of gauges available which are shown in the following images.
Calendars in Reports
A Calendar control is another reporting control which is not supported by many reporting tools in the market. Nevertheless, Dundas reports have a calendar control for SSRS.
In case you need to show tasks as in Microsoft Office Outlook, you can use Dundas Calendar Reports. You have the option to view tasks in Year, Quarter, Month, Week and Day. Calendars can be one of several different styles such as 'PreviousCurrent', 'CurrentQuarter', 'Single' and 'FullYear'.
Maps in Reports
Displaying maps is not an easy reporting task. However, there is a reporting tool from Dundas to help display maps as shown in the following reports.
In this report, region wise sales are shown in the map. According to this report, the US region has sales for 60 million and Canada has 20 million while Australia has 10 million sales.
If you click the US region you will be taken to the detail report of the US region which is displayed below.
Likewise, if you select Canada you will be taken to the detail report for the Canadian region.
You can display either the name of the province or the sales amount depending on your requirement.
There are several regions like, Asia, Europe, Africa, Japan, China, India and South America that you can show using Dundas Map.
I have found two issues with these Dundas maps:
1. Region cannot be parameterised. For example, if you select region and you want to move it to the correct region, you need to have several reports and need to use the SWITCH command to display the correct report.
eg.
=SWITCH(Fields!Name.Value="United States","dundas_us_region",FieldsName.Value="Canada","dundas_canada_region")
2. When you want to navigate to other report, there should be at least one parameter. In the above case, though I didn’t want any parameters to pass to the other report, instead you need to pass a dummy parameter.
Download
You can download an evaluation copy for each control from the links given below. From these installations, you will get a sample report solution for each control from which you can get assistance. Most of the above screen shots were taken from the sample solutions which are installed together with the relevant control
| Control | Download | Overview |
| Dundas Chart for Reporting Services | http://www.dundas.com/Downloads/downloadRequest.aspx?SKU=DCRS2.2EVAL | http://www.dundas.com/Products/Chart/RS/index.aspx |
| Dundas Gauge for Reporting Services | http://www.dundas.com/Downloads/downloadRequest.aspx?SKU=DGRS1.5EVAL | http://www.dundas.com/Products/Gauge/RS/index.aspx |
| Dundas Calendar for Reporting Services | http://www.dundas.com/Downloads/downloadRequest.aspx?SKU=DCALRS1.6EVAL | http://www.dundas.com/Products/Calendar/RS/index.aspx |
| Dundas Map for Reporting Services | http://www.dundas.com/Downloads/downloadRequest.aspx?SKU=DMRS1.0EVAL | http://www.dundas.com/Products/Map/RS/index.aspx |
SQL Server 2008 Support
Microsoft acquired Dundas Technology to use the control in SQL Server 2008. This means that there shouldn’t be any doubts about Dundas support in SQL Server 2008. Apart from the support for SQL Server 2008, there are additional features as well.
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