REDMOND, Wash., June 22, 2004 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the release of the first service pack (SP1) for Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services. Reporting Services is an open and extensible reporting platform that can increase business insight by providing real-time information from any data source to any device. Reporting Services SP1 is available to SQL Server 2000 customers free via Web download and includes enhancements that increase functionality, performance and security. Key features of SP1 include support for exporting reports to Excel 97 and 2000, improvements in the PDF rendering extension for pagination and matrix performance, and control over series and data point styles in charts. These changes enable companies to get even more out of their SQL Server 2000 investments.
Since its launch in January, there have been more than 75,000 downloads of Reporting Services by customers looking for an easy way to deliver critical business information. With Reporting Services SP1, customers can continue to experience enterprise-level performance, flexible and dynamic reporting options, and outstanding ease of use at no additional cost. Reporting Services combines a powerful report generation engine with manageability features that make it easy to provide compelling reports to end users. By leveraging a familiar design environment, Reporting Services also enables companies to free up limited developer and database administration resources to be spent on other projects, which creates a more efficient and cost-effective reporting system. With the addition of Reporting Services, SQL Server, part of Windows Server System, offers the single most comprehensive data management and business intelligence (BI) platform on the market.
Customer Testimonials
“Ruby Tuesday needed a reporting solution that was robust enough to handle 700 restaurants running 10,000 reports in the same four-hour period. Reporting Services not only handled that with ease, but we now enjoy 50 percent faster report creation due to Reporting Services’ easy report authoring and management features, all at a low cost to us,” said Terry Sorrows, director of Technology Development at Ruby Tuesday Inc. “Based on these results, we have decided to migrate all our enterprise reporting systems to Reporting Services. In addition, we are looking forward to the new hidden parameter support in Service Pack 1.”
“We currently have approximately 50 different Reporting Services reports in production and have made it a corporate reporting standard in the custom development arena,” said James Faith, lead Web engineer at Phelps Dodge Corp. “Reporting Services has single-handedly given our custom developers a quick, easy and powerful reporting tool. Even better, our customers have been extremely pleased with our newfound ability to rapidly produce Excel-style graphs, complex reporting and drill-into reports.”
“With Reporting Services, very little training or programming is required to quickly deploy simple tabular reports or even more complicated drill-through and drill-down reports. This saves us time and money and enables us to author reports more efficiently, which is critical to meeting the rapidly changing needs of our data customers,” said Rod Bautista, senior database administrator at Allianz Dresdner Asset Management. “In addition, the familiar design environment and simplicity of the Web interface are major benefits for our users. As expected, installing Reporting Services SP1 went without incident, and we were pleased with how seamless the upgrade was to the end user. We look forward to taking advantage of the increased functionality in this service pack.”
About SQL Server
Microsoft SQL Server, part of Windows Server System, is the complete database and analysis offering for rapidly delivering the next generation of scalable e-commerce, line-of-business and business intelligence solutions. It dramatically reduces the time required to bring these applications to market while offering the scalability needed for the most-demanding environments. More information on Microsoft SQL Server can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/sql/ .
About Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is an integrated and interoperable server infrastructure that reduces IT complexity to enable IT professionals to deliver innovative solutions that meet the changing needs of business. With Windows Server 2003 at the foundation, Windows Server System is engineered from the ground up for XML Web services based on Microsoft .NET technologies to connect information, people, systems and devices. Based on a common software architecture that spans all facets of IT from design, development and deployment through ongoing management and usage, Windows Server System provides comprehensive IT infrastructure for operations (security, systems management, networked storage), applications (data management and analysis, e-business), and information work (messaging, communications and collaboration). More information on Microsoft Windows Server System can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/ .
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.
Note to editors : If you are interested in viewing additional information on Microsoft, please visit the Microsoft Web page at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/ on Microsoft’s corporate information pages. Web links, telephone numbers and titles were correct at time of publication, but may since have changed. For additional assistance, journalists and analysts may contact Microsoft’s Rapid Response Team or other appropriate contacts listed at http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/contactpr.asp .
