Do more with less!

As you probably know, Microsoft has made a great effort to scale down the SQL Server 2005 components and provide more features at a lesser cost. Here are some links worth checking.

SQL Server 2005 Feature Comparison

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/sql2005features.mspx

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Enhancements

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/sql/2005/2005ssrs.mspx

SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services Features Matrix

http://www.microsoft.com/sql/2005/productinfo/rsfeatures.mspx

As far as Reporting Services is concerned, here are a couple of important points.

1.      Reporting Services 2005 will run on the Express Edition of SQL Server 2005 (previously known as MSDE in SQL Server 2000). What it means to you is that you can build and distribute reasonably feature-rich reporting solutions for free. This could be nirvana for many software vendors and integrators. Now you can build a report enabled-application and distribute the SQL Server components at zero cost to the client.

2.      Different editions support different feature sets. The last link provides a detailed comparison about supported reporting features. Extensibility and several export formats are not supported on Express and Standard editions.

Aren’t you excited? It is really do more with less!

Happy reporting.