In the recent announcement outlining the SharePoint integration strategy on the SQL Server Reporting Services Team’s blog, there was a statement that was almost hidden that I think deserves more attention. The statement was:
“….in time, we aim to support web-based viewing of Excel workbooks in Native mode…”
This may not sound like a big deal – after all, we’ve been able to serve up Excel workbooks in a browser since Excel Services was initially introduced with SharePoint 2007. However, as per Microsoft’s Reporting Roadmap from October 2015, Reporting Services is their on-premises solution for BI report delivery. If an Excel workbook is to be considered a report, the SSRS absolutely should be able to do it. The roadmap defined four types of reports:
- Paginated
- Interactive
- Analytical
- Mobile
I tend to see there being two types of reports, Structured and Analytical. In the list above, Structured corresponds with Paginated, and the other 3 types are different subtypes of Analytical. They four categories do, however line up well with the different reporting technologies available.
| Report Type | File Type |
| Paginated | RDL (Classic SSRS) |
| Interactive | PBIX (Power BI) |
| Analytical | XLSX (Excel) |
| Mobile | RSMOBILE (SSRS Mobile aka Datazen) |
The roadmap was primarily concerned with the future of SSRS, but SSRS is Microsoft’s stated report delivery platform for on-premises reporting. The platform for cloud reporting is of course Power BI. There is a third platform for the delivery of “Analytical”, or Excel based reports, and that’s Excel Online. On premises, it’s called Office Online Server, but it is the same technology. The three platforms and their capabilities are shown below.
|
SSRS |
Excel Online/OOS |
Power BI |
||
| Paginated |
Yes |
N/A |
No |
|
| Interactive |
Preview |
N/A |
Yes |
|
| Analytical |
Announced |
Yes |
Yes |
|
| Mobile |
yes |
N/A |
Yes |
|
The technical preview of Power BI reports in Reporting Services is available for testing, which covers Interactive reports in SSRS, and the above statement indicates that there is a solution to support Analytic reports in SSRS as well. The Power BI platform does this already, and it is done by leveraging the capabilities of Excel Online. Given the fact that Office Online server provides the same capabilities on premises, it makes sense that it would be used by SSRS when the Excel workbook support is added.
It should also be noted that the above comparison shows Mobile reports being supported by Power BI. To be clear, Power BI does not support RSMOBILE files, but regular Power BI reports are inherently mobile and available through the Power BI mobile client. which is also how RSMOBILE reports are delivered to end users.
The Reporting Services team is clearly very close to completing the vision laid out over a year ago, in the Reporting Roadmap for on-premises users. If the goal is to have parity between on-premises and cloud platforms, the only thing remaining (apart from possible support of the RSMOBILE format) is support for Paginated reports in Power BI. There have been no statements made regarding this capability, but its absence is certainly notable.
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