SQL Server Reporting Services Vs Infomaker

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Hi Revanth,

Functionality wise, you’d be hard pressed to come up with general report specs for a report  that couldn’t be created in either tool, and gurus in both can create some pretty amazing reports.

But to me, the main advantage of SSRS over Infomaker is that it’s a less quirky environment to develop reports.  For example, in Infomaker, you get some pretty strange results if you don’t add a new field as the last field in the report.  With SSRS it’s a breeze.

Another SSRS advantage is training opportunities. It’s easy to pick up SSRS books and find local training. For example, Amazon lists 91 books for ‘microsoft reporting services’, and Infomaker 5 (only 1 in print). PASS (The Professional Association for SQL Server) has many free online sessions on SSRS. Likewise, it should be easier to find people trained in SSRS.

Since SSRS is part of SQL Server , it integrates with SSIS and SSAS and you can use either as a datasource. Also, you can base a SSRS report on a report model of the tables/relationships.

Hope that helps,

John Stephenson

I've started using SSRS for all new reports. I have to say that the Microsoft interface is much easier to work with. It has cut the report creation time down considerably. It was also pretty easy to pick up as the IDE is familiar.

Some other positives about using SSRS are:

When you save a composite report, it saves all the data from the sub reports.

Reports can add elements of interactivity (ie click on columns to see detail or jump to another report)

When you save a report as excel all formatting is preserved.

Web based so even non Tessitura users can see your reports if you grant permissions.

Christian @ The Tech

There may also be some licensing / cost considerations as well.