We are in the process of doing techincal design. We would like to know what is the Ad-hoc Capability part of SSRS. We have done some POC with Report Model and building reports with Report builder. Options 2 : Build Analysis Services Universe and expose that through the Report builder. I would like to know from the group each approach what are the benifts and disadvantages. I am also looking if you have any suggestion on the Report Builder books or resource which i can refer to.Anekm

There are many aspects to consider before deciding one or the other or both. The Reporting and Analytics services of SQL server cater to distinct needs. The reporting is primarily for day-to-day reporting where are the cube is to do trend analysis. In my experience most of the users in any given organization would be using the reporting side. A much smaller sub-set of users would be doing the analysis kind of reporting. Depending on how tech savvy your end users are you want to decide if you want to create report models on your database or allow users to create their own ad-hoc reports directly of the database. There are many advantages in my view to build Report models like you have a better control over what and how it is exposed to the end-user. The end user does not have to be tech/SQL savvy to build a report. On the cube side you have to build a warehose that will be a repository of historic data which will help you do the trending or “What if” kind of analysis.