Working with Map Report Items
To visualize business data against a geographical background, you can add a map to your report. The type of map that you select depends on what information that you want to communicate in your report. You can add a map that displays locations only, or a bubble map that varies bubble size based on number of households for an area, or a marker map that varies marker style based on the most profitable product for each store, or a line map that displays routes between stores.
Maps use spatial data from one of the following sources:
Map Gallery reports. Spatial data is embedded in reports installed in the map gallery. By default, the map gallery is installed in <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\PrivateAssemblies\MapGallery.
Note
This Reporting Services mapping feature uses data from TIGER/Line Shapefiles provided courtesy of the U.S. Census Bureau (http://www.census.gov/). TIGER/Line Shapefiles are an extract of selected geographic and cartographic information from the Census MAF/TIGER database. TIGER/Line Shapefiles are available without charge from the U.S. Census Bureau. To obtain more information about the TIGER/Line shapefiles go to http://www.census.gov/geo/www/tiger. The boundary information in the TIGER/Line Shapefiles are for statistical data collection and tabulation purposes only; their depiction and designation for statistical purposes does not constitute a determination of jurisdictional authority or rights of ownership or entitlement and they are not legal land descriptions. Census TIGER and TIGER/Line are registered trademarks of the U.S. Bureau of the Census.
ESRI shapefiles. ESRI shapefiles contain data that complies with the Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc. (ESRI) shapefile spatial data format. ESRI shapefiles refer to a set of files. Data in the .shp file specifies the geographical or geometrical shapes. Data in the .dbf file provides attributes for the shapes. To view a map in design view or to run a map from the report server, both files must be in the same folder. When you add spatial data from a .shp file on your local file system, the spatial data is embedded in your report. To retrieve spatial data dynamically at run time, add the ESRI shapefiles to your report project in Business Intelligence Development Studio, and specify the .shp file as the source of spatial data for the layer.
SQL Server spatial data stored in a database. You can use a query that specifies SQLGeometry or SQLGeography data types from a SQL Server relational database. For more information, see Types of Spatial Data.
In the result set that you see in the query designer, each row of spatial data is treated as a unit and stored in a single map element. For example, if there are multiple points that are defined in one row in the result set, display properties apply to all points in that map element.
Custom locations that you create. You can manually add locations as embedded points to an embedded point layer. For more information, see How to: Add Custom Locations to a Map.
You can save a map separately from the report as a report part. Report parts are stored on the report server and available for others to use in their reports. Instead of creating a map from scratch, you can search for one in the Report Part Gallery and use it as is or change it to fit your needs. Either way, using report parts makes report writing easier and faster. For more information, see Publishing Report Parts in Report Designer.
For more information, see the following topics in the Report Builder 3.0 documentation on msdn.microsoft.com.