Hi,
In the very first post of the series will cover the basic of SSRS reporting.
In AX 2012 (all versions and releases) SQL Server Reporting Services is used as basic reporting platform. The architecture is quite different from the last version (AX 2009) and is much more flexible and supports a lot more data retrieval mechanism. The programming model is also enhanced to cater to the various scenarios and report types.
For understanding and developing reports in AX 2012, a good to have pre-requisite would be:
1. SSRS reporting development
3. AX knowledge
2. X++
Reporting Architecture
The reporting architecture is very clearly explained in this MSDN article. I will not go into detailed explanation of the architecture but two quick basic points to keep in mind would be:
- There is a custom extension that is used for data retrieval. So essentially this extension is same as any other out-of-box extension that SSRS already has (e.g.: SQL Server, SQL Server Analysis Services, Oracle, etc…). This extension gets available when we install Reporting services extensions using the AX 2012 Setup.
- Services are available which ensure the connectivity between SSRS server and AX. The specific service is “Services”. This can be found in AX client under System Administration->Services and Application Integration Framework->Inbound ports. Note: Always ensure that this service is deployed and running.
I will cover the deployment in the next article.
– Girija
girijashankar 