SQL Server Reporting Services Team Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

Is Reporting Services going the way of the dodo, to be replaced by Power View (Project Crescent?)

No.

Comparing Power View, Report Builder, and Report Designer

Power View won’t replace the existing Reporting Services reporting products.

Report Designer is a sophisticated design environment that developers and IT pros can use for embedded reporting in their applications. In Report Designer they can create operational reports, shared data sources, and shared datasets, and author report viewer controls.

In Report Builder, IT pros and power users can create powerful operational reports, and reusable report parts and shared datasets.

Report Builder and Report Designer create RDL reports; Power View creates RDLX reports. Power View cannot open RDL reports, and vice versa.

Both Report Designer and Report Builder are shipping in Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Release Candidate 0 (RC 0) Reporting Services, along with Power View. For more information, see Tools (SSRS).

SQL Server Reporting Services Team Blog - Site Home - MSDN Blogs

It is interesting that Microsoft is launching tools like PowerPivot and Power View, knowing that they will cannibalize their existing Analysis Services and Reporting Services products and roadmaps for future installations.

My question is, why don’t they just go all-in and build out these tools as replacements, instead of diverging paths?  Why not incorporate all the best features of Power View into Report Builder, and leverage the RDL language that is designed for reporting? 

Same goes for Analysis Services and PowerPivot.  Why have two separate servers for each product?  What is the value (other than licensing) of splitting up these technologies into 2 siloed environments?  The sum of the parts is much better than the individual. 

Still looking for some cohesion and sense of direction for the future of SQL Server reporting and BI tools… and hoping for a better 2012.

A deployment checklist for the new Denali / SQL 2012 tools

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh231687(v=sql.110).aspx