Customer Rating:  
Summary: Poor layout, poor organisation and poor delivery
Comment: To start with the first 3 chapters are a waste of time. Chapters 6 and 7, covering advanced reporting techniques should have been expanded on in detail with a step by step layout - instead we get a dumb comment - "you've learnt the details in earlier chapters (not true of the code). There is constant problems in reading the text - so much garbage and no proper highlight of key words - its impossible to race through the book, you only can trod like an old man. Unnecessary information is given that is not required. Chapter 11 - Report server configuration is at the end of the book but should be at the front - these nutters assume you are a dba when it comes to environment configuration. The book is a shambles of a layout and i give it one star for the sheer frustration it caused me - how do you learn in this condition - you waste a lot of time swearing and cursing and perfect these skills and not your reporting skills!!
Customer Rating:
Summary: Confusing!
Comment: The reason for being so confusing is this book was written by so many authors, thereby the ideas presented are not coherent. This is not a learner's book, and if you're looking for one I suggest you buy Brian Larson's instead - great book, easy to follow and the author will patiently answer your inquiries regarding some minor problems.
I bought this book yesterday hoping I could supplement the things I've already learned previously regarding RS, but no, I'll return this book today and ask for a refund.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Needs stronger editing, walkthroughs hard to follow.
Comment: Almost impossible to do the walkthroughs as the writers can't decide if they are giving you instructions or just offering some general concepts. Chapters 1-3 are a waste of time. Go straight to chapter 4 to get started.
The format is too conversational and often fluffed-out with irrelevant details.
Overall, another disappointing Wrox text that has too many authors and no editor.
Customer Rating:
Summary: About Average
Comment: This book is about average. With that I am not implying that it is a bad book but rather that you could find the same information on the Internet just by googling a little bit. I guess I was expecting to find something really clever in it, something that it would make it more useful that simple internet articles. Again, not a bad book but also not one that will make the difference.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tough to get through
Comment: This will probably be an ok reference for some things in ssrs, but otherwise it has been a real pain to get through. There seems to be a huge amount of repetitive informatin in the first three chapters before we actually get to start writing reports.
Unfortunately, once writing reports, it seems like the authors have ADD. They start talking about a walk through exercise but never actually have the walk through. They do have a couple of exercises where they show you how to go step by step, but these are not explained well.
I think the writing, other than being repetative, is sometimes unecessarily chatty, but at other times way to terse for beginners.
I have managed to glean some value from the book, but it's been tough. I would definitely recommend if you haven't touched SSRS yet to go through the tutorials on MSDN first. They do a better job of introducing you to basics, giving you plain instructions, and not overloading you with commentary that isn't all helpful in just getting you up to speed on how to create reports. Luckily I did this before I bought the book. I think if I was completely new to reporting and SSRS, I would have thrown this book down in disgust after the first 100 pages or so...
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