Using MS SSRS for enterprise reporting

Question

I would like to try out SSRS in a pretty simple way. I want to have our offshore development team create reports (in the form of RDL files?) with both tabular and graphical elements (simple pie charts, graphs, etc.) based on queries that they write against our database. Once they have written and "deployed" the report, I want to be able to run the report by selecting it from a dropdown in a pre-existing WinForms UI that our team already uses (of course the dropdown and the "Run Report" button will be new features of this UI). I want running of the report to just open a browser with a URL to a web-based SSRS UI. Is this possible to do without writing a custom UI for reporting? Basically, I am wondering what (if any) UI options come pre-packaged with SSRS. Is there something that comes with it that is HTML-based and will allow users to specify the input parameters for a report?

Answer 1

There is a HTML-based website that comes with SSRS that allows you to select reports at http://ServerName/Reports. It will allow you to select a report, enter the parameters then run the reports and then select output options - print, Excel, PDF, etc.

There is also the Report Viewer control for WinForms.