In 2011 we migrated from Business Objects 6.5 to SSRS for our ERP reporting, this was just after Report Builder 3 was released. Since then there hasn't been a single update to Report Builder and it looks like SQL Server 2014 won't be updating this tool either.

What's the plan for Report Builder? Is there a long-term future for this product?

Hi Andy,

Although the Report Builder released with SQL Server 2008 R2 and the Report Builder released with SQL Server 2012 are both Report Builder 3.0, they have different capability. The SQL Server 2012 Report Builder supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services including the functionality first introduced in SSRS 2012. Similarly, the Report Builder released by SSRS 2014 will also support the full report design capabilities of SSRS 2014. In my opinion, as one of the two report authoring tools in SSRS (Report Designer and Report Builder), the Report Builder should have a long-term future.  

Regards,
Mike Yin

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That's interesting - what do you mean by the "full capabilities". What could we do in Report Builder 3 running against 2012 that we couldn't do against 2008R2? How would the users experience change?

Hi Any,

Sorry for the delay.

In SSRS 2012, the major enhancement about report authoring is that the Word/Excel rendering extension renders reports to the native format of Microsoft Word/Excel 2007-2010. The format is Office Open XML. The previous version of the Word rendering extension, compatible with Microsoft Word 2003, is renamed to Word 2003. By default, the Word 2003 and Excel 2003 extensions are hidden, and we can make them visible by modifying the rsreportserver.config file. In addition, there should be some known issues in SSRS 2008 R2 be fixed in SSRS 2012.

Although the operating experience between SSRS 2008 R2 Report Builder and SSRS 2012 Report Builder may be very similar, the newer product always introduces functionality enhancement.

Regards,
Mike Yin

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I guess the point I'm making is if you look at other vendors in this space I'm pretty sure you won't see three full updates (2008R2, 2012, and now 2014) go by without significant changes to their reporting application.

I don't think anyone would try and argue that "Report Builder 3" is as-good-as-reporting-gets!

I'm sure there have been plenty of under-the-covers bug fixes but where are the new features? What's the roadmap? I'm not knocking bug fixes - but it's hardly innovative and when our users are being wowed by other vendors it would be nice to be able to respond with "but look what's coming"!

Hi Andy,

Thank you for your post.

I am trying to involve someone more familiar with this topic for a further look at this issue. Sometime delay might be expected from the job transferring. Your patience is greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Thanks,
Mike Yin

If you have any feedback on our support, please click here

Hi,

You can see new features for Report Builder for SQL 2012 from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee633667.aspx

So after, presumably, two years of development what Microsoft has to offer is support for later versions or Word and Excel? This doesn't look like a product in active development to me ...