Daniel Bowlin (10/24/2012)
Excel and PowerPivot directly connected to the database. There is also a tool in 2012 (I forget the name) that is very much like Tableau and supposedly available to end users for report development.
That tool is PowerView.
Just to summarize everything, these are report building applications:
* BIDS (or SSDT in SQL Server 2012): developing SSRS reports. Meant for developers.
* Report Builder 3.0: developing SSRS reports. Meant for developers/analysts/power users.
* Excel: PivotTables on top of database or SSAS. You can create normal reports on top of SSAS using CUBE functions, but this is pretty advanced and tiresome.
* PowerPivot: plug-in for Excel. Combines different datasources and creates a tabular model in its engine. Reports are like PivotTables.
* PowerView: reports on top of Tabular data sources (SQL Server 2012 SSAS Tabular). Before Office 2013 SharePoint Enterprise is needed to deploy the reports. Nice interactivity with PowerPoint. With Office 2013 PowerView is also available in Excel, making Excel one of the most obvious choices for end users to create reports.
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My blog at https://sqlkover.com.
MCSE Business Intelligence - Microsoft Data Platform MVP