What I like about SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services: The Configuration Manager

I’ve been slacking a little bit in terms of blogging, but now that CTP6 is out with a bunch of new stuff I can “officially” talk about, I suspect I’ll be a bit more active.

Today while building a VPC image of CTP6, it occurred to me how small improvements really add up. For example, take the Configuration Manager for SSRS 2008. Don’t get me wrong, version 2005 was just fine. But this new one – nice – you can tell someone took some time to figure out how to make life easier for admins.

The whole tool is more wizard-driven and less likely to confused first-time users. For example, the configure database task is substantially more intuitive than it used to be. When teaching classes, I saw users regularly create the ReportServer database, but then forget to actually “join” it. The wizard doesn’t allow you to make this mistake (at least not easily).

The text associated with each option in the tool is thoughtful and concise. Before, you actually had to understand the product already or RTFM to really know what you were doing in Config Manager. Now, everything you need is already right there: easy!

So anyway, I like the Configuration Manager – attention to detail on this fairly minor piece of functionality is a good sign in terms of what the rest of the product does!