Paginated Reports eBook Finally Released

At last, the second edition of “SQL Server Report Recipes” written by Paul Turley, Robert Bruckner and a host of contributors; is being released, a few recipes at a time. This time around, it will be a free book published through my blog and perhaps other sources. I’ve posted the introductory chapter and six report design recipes. You may also download the sample SQL Server database used in all the recipe reports. I sincerely hope that you and others will use this as a free resource to serve the common interest of the greater community. Please spread the word and send those who might learn and benefit to this page.

The work on this book really started about eighteen years ago…

Late December back in 2003; what a very special time for me! SQL Server Reporting Services was due to be released to the market and I had been using the pre-released version to integrate reports into a custom web application. After using a variety of products like FoxPro, Access and Crystal Reports, and after mastering essential T-SQL queries and .NET programming, using SSRS was a dream. It was simple and elegant, programmable and powerful. I was so excited that I wanted to tell the world, so I recruited authors to write our first book about Reporting Services. Three editions later, I teamed up with Robert Bruckner, one of the lead developers on the SSRS product team at Microsoft, to write a different kind of book. Robert and I had both blogged quite a lot about report design techniques. Robert had done some crazy things in SSRS that no one knew was possible. He found very creative ways to develop games using SSRS such as tic-tac-toe, hangman and Battleship. Honestly, there are easier ways to do game programming, but he proved that almost anything was possible if you were willing to think outside the box and maybe even draw outside the lines a bit.

Several contributing authors have worked tirelessly over the past difficult year to make this eBook a reality. Others, through no fault of their own, sign-up to contribute to the book but “the year that shall not be named” had other plans. At first we paused, and then we stopped and then we regrouped and decided to publish a shorter but comprehensive, modern kind of book.

Please visit the new Welcome and Introductory page with the Table of Contents to the current and future recipes: Paginated Report Recipes: 2020-2021 | Paul Turley’s SQL Server BI Blog