Brian Larson - Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Reporting Services

Brian Larson served as a member of the original Reporting Services development team as a consultant to Microsoft. In that role, he contributed to the original code base of Reporting Services. Brian is currently the Chief Creative Officer for Superior Consulting Services in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Brian has presented at national conferences and events, including the SQL Server Magazine Connections Conference, the PASS Community Summit, and the Microsoft Business Intelligence Conference and has provided training and mentoring on Reporting Services across the country. He has been a contributor and columnist for SQL Server Magazine. In addition to this book, Brian is the author of Delivering Business Intelligence with Microsoft SQL Server 2016 and co-author of Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View, both from McGraw-Hill Professional.

Brian is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, with degrees in physics and computer science. He has 31 years of experience in the computer industry and 27 years of experience as a consultant creating custom database applications. Brian is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) in Business Intelligence and a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA).

Brian and his wife Pam have been married for 31 years. Pam will tell you that their first date took place at the campus computer center. If that doesnt qualify someone to write a computer book, then I dont know what does. Brian and Pam have two children, Jessica and Corey.

Jared Zagelbaum is a highly experienced IT professional, specializing in the Microsoft Data Platform suite of technologies since 2007. He expertly leads projects and teams through enterprise solution design and implementation for data management, analytics, and information delivery. Jared regularly speaks at user groups and events across the Midwest, as well as blogging and providing technical review for SQL Server publications. He is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert (MCSE) in Business Intelligence and a graduate of the University of Florida with a BS in Finance, Accounting, and Economics.

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This book is dedicated to my family. To my children, Jessica and Corey, who gave up many hours of dad time during the writing of multiple editions of this book. And especially to my wife, Pam, who, in addition to allowing me to commit to this project, gave countless hours of her own time to make sure things were done right.

B efore I joined Microsoft, I worked at an IT consultancy developing custom software for enterprise clients. In many ways, each new engagement presented a new set of challenges: a new organization, a new group of people, a new industry, a new business problem. At the same time, I learned a key to consulting: recognizing patterns of problems and developing a toolbox to tackle them. Clients tended to prefer web-based solutions, and ASP.NET became my tool of choice. They needed a way to store and manage their data, and SQL Server became my tool of choice. And almost without exception, they needed to generate reports from their data and deliver them to the right people to act on them. There, SQL Server Reporting Services became my tool of choice and served meand my clientswell in countless projects. A number of resources helped me learn this powerful tool, including Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services by Brian Larson, an earlier edition of the book you now hold.

A decade later, my fascination with Reporting Services had carried me into a role at Microsoft guiding the direction of that very product. Reporting Services hadnt been updated in a few years, but our team was making swift work of overhauling it. Attending a conference to show off a preview version, I interacted with many people excited about what theyd seen, but one conversation in particular stood out. This friendly fellow spoke with an unusually deep knowledge of the product, and at the same time, immediate insight into how to apply the new features hed just seen to common business use cases. He introduced himself as Brian Larson, and so I put a face to the name of the person whod written the book on Reporting Services (literally).