Reporting Services with SQL Azure : Creating the Report Design

With your report in Design view, you can now start laying it out. In this example you don't do anything flashy or extensive, just something simple to demonstrate your connectivity to SQL Azure. Follow these steps:

1. From the Toolbox, drag a text box and table onto the Report Designer window. Move the text box to the top of the report: it's the report title. Change the text in the text box to My First Azure SSRS Report.

2. The table you placed on the report has three columns, but you need five. Right-click any of the existing columns, and select Insert Column → Right from the context menu to add an additional column. Add one more column for a total of five.

3. From the Report Data window, drag the Name, Intro, Title, State, and Country columns from the dataset to the columns in the table, as shown in Figure 1.

   Figure 1. Report Design view

   

Your simple report is finished—it isn't complex or pretty, but it's functional. You're now ready to test the report: to do that, select the Preview tab. You see the result in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Report Preview view

Figure 2 shows the results of your labors, displaying the Name, Intro, Title, State, and Country data from the Users table in your SQL Azure database. If your report looks like this, congratulations are in order—you just created a report that queries a SQL Azure database.