Tutorial: Customizing Report Builder Clickthrough Reports

New: 14 April 2006

A person reading a Report Builder report can click the interactive data in the columns and rows to generate new reports about that data. These new reports, called clickthrough reports, are automatically generated from the default detail attributes for the target entity and the default aggregate attributes for the target entity's related entities. Depending on how you assign these attributes when designing your model, you can create an infinite clickthrough experience for people creating Report Builder reports and their report readers.

The appearance of the clickthrough report depends on whether the data clicked is a scalar value or an aggregate value. When a scalar value is clicked, the single instance report template is used to display the data as a list of values. When an aggregate value is clicked, the multiple instance report template is used to display the data in a table.

Rather than relying on the automatic report templates that are used for clickthrough reports, you can create your own customized reports and use them as the clickthrough report instead. For example, suppose you want a report that provides pertinent information about a specific product to be displayed when a person reading a Report Builder report clicks the product name in the main report. Rather than use the automatically generated single instance report, you can create a report that contains specific data about the product that you want your report readers to see.

In this tutorial, you will create a Report Builder report, and then learn how to link the report to an entity in the report model. After you link the report to the model, you will verify the changes that you made.

Note

Clickthrough reports are available only when running SQL Server Enterprise edition. If you are unsure of which version of SQL Server that your organization is running, contact your database administrator.

Important

The sample databases are not installed automatically during setup, but you can install them at any time. For information about installing the samples, see Installing Samples.

Requirements

To use this tutorial, your system must have the following installed:

  • Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition of Reporting Services with the AdventureWorks database and the Adventure Works report model deployed. Reporting Services must be running in native mode.
    Support for clickthrough reports is not available in all other versions of SQL Server 2005. Support for models is not available in SQL Server Express editions. For more information, see Features Supported by the Editions of SQL Server 2005.
  • Business Intelligence Development Studio.
  • SQL Server Management Studio.
  • Microsoft .NET Framework version 2.0 on the system that will run Report Builder.

You must have the following permissions:

  • To deploy and publish the report model, you need to be assigned to the Content Manager or Publisher role.
  • Permissions to retrieve data from the AdventureWorks database.

Tasks

Lesson 1: Creating a Report Builder Report

Lesson 2: Linking the Report to the Report Model

Lesson 3: Verifying Your Clickthrough Report Changes

See Also

Other Resources

Working with Clickthrough Reports
DefaultDetailAttributes Collection (Model Designer)
DefaultAggregateAttributes Collection (Model Designer)
How to: Link a Report to a Model as a Clickthrough Report

Help and Information

Getting SQL Server 2005 Assistance