Wowiewow! Did I see something cool today, or what?
MS just released SQL Reporting Services (V1.0) and the 120-day evaluation copy is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=BA517C01-2E2F-4BC7-84AF-149B7637F807&displaylang=en. Run, don't walk. Need to read more? Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/ to see the business case, product overview and such. Not a techie (or, just like pretty pictures?) Go to: http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/SQL_Reporting.swf to see the flash.
This is the missing link to getting data back out of the repositories in which we so carefully stuff it using legacy applications, BizTalk and a variety of connectors and aggregators. Data can be supplied to the reports by multiple database sources and OLAP cubes. Drill-through and drill-down are easy to implement (drag and drop query builder) and management for snapshot, historical and cached instance reports.
Report creation is so much more inspired than the old 'banded report' format (supports multiple data sets on a single page without sub reports). The authoring tool is built in to Visual Studio .NET which manages report projects like any other application. The framework supports authoring, intermediate staging and rendering processes in a workflow that allows reuse without redesign, export to other formats without excruciating pain.
I have 20 pages of notes (mostly high-level 'how to' stuff), but take a peek at the site to see the business and developer cases.