Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Reviews

Our primary use case for SSRS is building and creating reports for our clients.

The most valuable features of SSRS include its ability to design reports, connect to databases, and deploy reports into the Server. Then, connect to a web application or show the user that they can view this report on the browser. 

The product could be improved by reducing the time it takes to build and deploy reports. We have improved the Server, but it's still in the prototype stage. It takes more time than another.

I've been using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) for approximately ten years.

The stability of SSRS has been reliable, with minimal issues encountered during our usage.

The product has shown good scalability, allowing us to handle increasing data volumes and reporting requirements effectively.

Before SSRS, we used Crystal Reports primarily for reporting purposes. However, we switched to SSRS due to its better integration with web applications and improved functionality for our business needs.

The initial setup was relatively straightforward, especially considering our familiarity with Microsoft products. However, optimizing performance and configuring advanced features required additional effort.

We implemented SSRS primarily through an in-house team, leveraging our expertise in Microsoft technologies.

While I don't have specific ROI metrics, the platform has significantly enhanced our organization's reporting efficiency and decision-making capabilities.

The product pricing is reasonable in terms of suitable features for business.

We evaluated various reporting solutions, including Crystal Reports and other Microsoft reporting tools. Despite integrating with other Microsoft products, such as Power BI, SSRS emerged as the most suitable option for our requirements.

The data visualization capabilities of Reporting Services (SSRS) play a crucial role in enhancing our reporting for business applications. Our application is accessible to clients and customers, allowing them to utilize various services. They seamlessly interact with our application to access a range of functionalities, including generating generic reports certificates and performing various tasks.

I recommend the product for its ease of use and compatibility with various Microsoft tools, including Office tools.

The product's data analysis feature is good. We can consume different databases with reporting services.

It's essential to regularly update and optimize SSRS to take advantage of Microsoft's latest features and improvements. Additionally, investing in training and upskilling employees on SSRS usage can maximize the organization's benefits.

I rate it a ten out of ten.

We use it to create reports within our internal systems, specifically our proprietary systems. So it's integrated into our existing applications.

We were able to embed the report builder within our internal proprietary systems, improving our reporting capabilities.

It's integrated, making it easier to use. It also provides better functionality within the SQL Server BI toolset.

There is room for improvement in the pricing model. The overall suite, including the BI suite, is expensive.

I have had a good number of years of experience.

It's pretty solid. It is a stable solution.

It's pretty scalable.

I usually refer to the FAQs for assistance.

The initial setup is pretty straightforward. 

I would rate my experience with the initial setup a seven out of ten, with one being complex and ten being easy. 

For the most part, the deployment takes a couple of days to install.

Around four people were involved in the deployment process. 

The ROI was not in monetary terms, but it has certainly improved usability and added extensive reporting within our internal toolset.

So, it saves time and improves efficiency.

 The suite itself is expensive due to the licensing model.

Overall, I would rate the pricing model a seven out of ten, with one being the cheapest and ten being the most expensive.

The decision should be made based on your usage of other Microsoft suite products. I would rate it an eight out of ten because of its feature set and its compatibility with other Microsoft BI toolsets.

I use it to create reports, specifically for SQL Server-based reporting. We use SQL Server Reporting Services in a medium-sized business environment within the government industry.

With SQL Server Reporting Services, I can create reports and printable reports, known as paginated reports. It's valuable since it allows me to create documentation using a template, which is difficult to achieve otherwise.

They could improve the scalability and stability of SQL Server Reporting Services. I haven't used it recently, so I can't provide detailed suggestions on improvements.

The stability of SQL Server Reporting Services is rated as seven out of ten. It could be improved further.

In terms of scalability, I would rate it a four out of ten, indicating there's room for improvement.

The customer service and support from Microsoft are good. I would rate it at seven point five out of ten. They are responsive and timely.

We now use Microsoft Power BI instead of SQL Server Reporting Services as it is more recent and versatile.

The initial setup is straightforward. If I had to rate it, with ten being the easiest, I would rate it a ten.

I don't recall the current pricing as it changes frequently.

I did not evaluate other solutions. Microsoft now offers Power BI, which we have switched to.

Currently, I would not recommend SQL Server Reporting Services since we switched to Power BI. Overall, I would rate SQL Server Reporting Services a six out of ten.

It is mainly for creating and managing less complicated reports. We use it for ourselves and for the DBA team to get some insights into the operational health of the database environment. 

And a few other teams are using it for some simple application reporting purposes. So, it is a fairly small reporting environment, not a big one.

What I like is the ease of use of the application. It is easy to set it up and start working with it. The reporting capabilities are also quite flexible. It is easy to create reports and it is easy to mark up the reports, to format the reports. And also the export capabilities to export the reporting in various file formats.

I would like to see more integrations. 

I have been using it for two years now. 

I would rate it at nine out of ten because we haven't had issues with Reporting Services. The only issue I can think of is if we perform a software upgrade of the environment or of the reporting instances. 

Sometimes, in some scenarios, things can break because of new, more stringent security controls or new functionalities in the Server, and all functionalities get deprecated. But it is basically a matter of reviewing the release notes of the new software release and making sure that those criteria have been met.

I would rate the scalability an eight because it is easy to scale out to the environment to add multiple servers in a farm so that if one server goes down, the other takes over the workload. And also in order to balance a lot across the environment.

Sometimes, we need to make sure that the configuration stays consistent across the reporting instances. They all connect to the same database. So, it shares that same backend, but the reporting services itself can also be configured. On the application level, for reporting level. And it is, based on my own experience, it is a manual effort to make sure that the reporting servers are configured the same across the environment.

But that's a minor detail because it is easy to get an overview of the current configuration of one Server and make sure that those configuration parameters are configured on the other nodes as well.

We have roughly 20 end users using this solution. 

The initial setup is easy. It is on-premises.

A first deployment takes less than 30 minutes. If you have all the prerequisites for, like, the server, an empty database, or actually not an empty database, but if you have the server, a database server, those kinds of things, then 30 minutes.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Microsoft also has another solution called Power BI. Power BI is a bit more powerful, and it has more integration compared to Microsoft SQL.

So, if organizations are considering using SQL Reporting Services, then it is also wise to do a comparison between Reporting Services and the newer Microsoft Power BI solution.

We use the solution mainly for the KPIs and dashboards.

I mainly use the solution for the ease of reporting and for executive dashboards.

I'm starting to use Power BI this year, and it would be really nice to have better integration between the solution and Power BI.

I have been using Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services since 2015.

Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services is a stable solution.

I rate the solution an eight out of ten for stability.

Microsoft's support is not generally good, but I haven't had to deal with it. I would only use Microsoft support for the licensing part, which is very complex for SQL Server.

Negative

When I was relatively new to it, the solution's initial setup was complex for me. On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a three or four out of ten.

According to me, the solution's pricing is very expensive, but I don't know how much Oracle or other competitors would cost. Since I am unfamiliar with other pricing schemes, the solution's pricing may be fair. Getting the type of license we bought was very complicated. Value-wise, the solution's pricing is good for the price that we pay. I rate the solution a seven out of ten for the value we received from the solution's pricing.

The solution's data visualization capabilities have helped enhance our reporting and made my life easier. I don't have to deal with third-party software.

The solution's integration with other tools and systems has proved to be a time-saver. The solution's integration saved me a few weeks out of a year on a lot of analytics. I would recommend the solution to other users.

Overall, I rate the solution a seven out of ten.

In one particular case, we had reporting issues and we were sucking data off of a couple of different systems into a data monitor. You might call it a data rig now. Due to the fact that we did that, we were using the transformation pieces to pull it into that data monitoring, and put out some operational-type reports.

The fun part about it was because we could do a lot with it and it didn't need necessarily another layer reports. It was pretty much encapsulated well already. 

The solution's features are all just wrapped up in one nice easy package. I don't need a lot of toolsets to get everything I need done.

It's not a difficult solution to figure out.

It doesn't have quite the flexibility of a Tableau or something like that. Many users are more comfortable with Tableau and I'm not quite sure why that is right now, but it seems to be the case.

The visualization needs improvement. They're lacking. Once again, Tableau is better in this respect. Basically taking the data and visualizing it onto the different types of reports and stuff like that needs to get better.

I've been using the solution for the last twelve years or so.

On-premises, I've never had stability issues with its exception of the original versions. It's safe to say the solution is quite stable at this point. For me, at least, it's been stable. I don't think I have a problem with it in that sense. It doesn't crash or freeze and I can't say it's buggy or glitchy.

The solution doesn't scale horizontally. 

From a vertical scalability standpoint, it's fine. It depends on the same issues that all relational databases do. Even if you set it up for reporting, etc. However, from a horizontal scaling, it really wasn't the way that it was designed. At the end of the day, I don't really know. I haven't used it for scaling purposes personally and don't even know if it's capable of scaling horizontally.

We probably only have about 100 users on the solution. It's not a lot. We just use it for a financial app.

Typically, if a company has bad consultants, they need to contact technical support a lot. However, we have a very good understanding of the product, so that's not usually necessary.

We've previously used a lot of different products, including Oracle OBIEE and Oracle Business Intelligence Discoverer. Discover is quite old. Most people wouldn't even know what it is. 

The initial setup question is a tricky one to answer. It depends on what you call easy. Some implemented well, and it was due to the fact that we put it in a monitor because the data didn't join well and we had some bigger data management issues. Some people would call that complex, and yet, it's pretty normal as to why you put something into a monitor.

On a smaller deployment, it was probably a couple of months of work. The process was probably only 200 man-hours to get what we needed out of it. It wasn't a huge deal.

The solution doesn't need too much maintenance. It would've just been something that once it was done, the normal staff just go ahead and do the maintenance. That's after the ETL programs are built, and so on. Maintenance is not a big deal. We can pretty much figure everything out. 

We compare a few different solutions. Tableau is usually easier for users to get behind as it's a bit simpler to use. It has good visualization.

I'm not sure which version of the solution we are currently using. We've updated it a few times over the years.

I'd advise other users to just to be really clear on what you're trying to accomplish. You've got to make sure it's the right product for what you're trying to do.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

The use case depends on the requirements of the system or applications. Organizations and individuals may use the product for different purposes ranging from small-scale applications to enterprise-level systems.

The solution is known for its robust security features. It is an excellent product. It is a widely used database management system.

The product should improve its performance. It should improve the optimization, encryption and access control. It should provide efficient resource management features.

I am currently using the solution.

The solution is stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten.

I had a good experience with technical support.

The initial setup is easy.

The solution is expensive.

I would recommend the solution to others. Overall, I rate the product a ten out of ten.

We use the product to build reports based on customer requirements. It also helps us to export documents to different formats like Excel, CSV, and Word document and share it through emails or FTP. 

I am impressed with the product's seamless integration. It can work with different databases like Oracle. 

I would like the solution to add a scheduling feature for reports. 

I have been using the solution for 10-15 years. 

I would rate the product's stability an eight out of ten. 

I am not sure about the tool's scalability since we haven't tried deploying it on multiple servers. 

Microsoft's support is good. 

Positive

I would rate the product's setup a seven out of ten. The tool's deployment takes a couple of days to complete. Microsoft provides installation media when you purchase the license. You need to do a verification after the deployment and configuration. 

The solution is cheaper than its alternatives. 

I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. You need to use the solution if your technology stack is Microsoft and the backend database is an SQL server.