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Enhancing Reporting Services with Dundas Reporting Controls

By : Dinesh Asanka
Jun 30, 2008

Introduction
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.

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