Add a new report

From the menu select Project > Add New Item. Select Report and name it "FirstReportMan.rdl".

A new report will be added to the project, and the Report Designer will open at the Data tab. At this point, let's take a closer look at the Report Designer tool.

At the top of the Report Designer window are three tabs: Data, Layout and Preview.

The Data tab is used to build data sources for your report.

The Layout tab is the physical report designer where you set up the header, the footer and the data presentation of the report.

The Preview tab allows you to actually run the report from Visual Studio 2005, without having to publish it to a report server first. If your report takes parameters, the Preview tab will ask you to fill them out before it runs the report.