The Data sources window contains the sources of data used to populate a report.

When you create a new report, you automatically create a new data source on which the report is based.

It is possible to define additional sources of data, so you can show data from different sources within the same report.

Note: when you click on a data source, you will make that source the current, thus forcing all tool windows to show information for that source.

Adding a new data source

To add a new data source select the command on the toolbar.

This will start a wizard that is the same wizard used when creating a new report. See creating new reports for more information on the wizard.

Creating a new data source will also open a new grid and dimensions window for that data source.

Each data source can be assigned a name. By default, the first data source is nameless. Every next data source is assigned a name called SourceX, where X is the sequence of the added source in the list of sources. The name of the source can be changed by typing a new value in the Name column for the source. The name is used to identify the report elements (i.e. grid, charts, etc.) associated with that source. The title of a source will be displayed in the title of the associated report element.

Choosing data source when adding report elements

When you have more than one data source defined for a report, adding a new report element will sometimes prompt from the data source to use for the report element. You are not always prompted though: when adding elements of which only one is allowed per data source (e.g. Grid, KPIs) and an element is already present for each data source except one, the element will automatically be assigned the free data source.

Setting the current measure group

By default, the interface is not filtered by measure group. You can however, filter the available hierarchies, measures, etc. by selecting a specific measure group from the drop down in the Measure group column. If you change the current measure group, the Dimensions window will be filtered to only display hierarchies associated with the current measure group. Possibly, the current query will be modified if it contains hierarchies or measures from another measure group.

Note: measure groups are only available in Analysis Services 2005 and higher.

Displaying a description of the current data source state

You can display a description of the current state of the data source as a natural language query and display it underneath the source it refers to. To turn this on, check the button on the toolbar.
Note: you can also display this description together with report elements in outputs or exports.

Deleting a data source

You can delete a data source by using the command on the toolbar. Deleting a data source will also remove all report elements associated with the data source from the report (you will be prompted for this first). A report must have at least one data source, so you can't delete the last data source from a report.

Opening the data sources window

By default, when creating a new report, the data sources window will automatically be opened. If you close it, by clicking on the cross in the top-right corner, you can reopen the window again by clicking on the button in the ribbon.