As I mentioned last week, I'll be delivering a session for Microsoft Certified Trainers (MCTs) on the weekend between Developer and ITPro weeks at the upcoming TechEd US in Orlando.

Here's the agenda-in-progress for my TTT session on SQL Server Reporting Services:

This session will cover the tools, architecture and usage of SQL Server Reporting Services, including a look at what’s changing in Reporting Services in SQL Server 2008, and the elusive topic of “how do you teach” this? This will be a 2.5+ hour chalktalk and demofest, with as few slides as possible.

The session is aimed both at MCTs who deliver (or plan to deliver) the SQL BI curriculum, and at MCTs who teach Microsoft technologies who build on or employ Reporting Services as an additional management tool.

• In the first segment, I'll introduce SSRS and show how it's being used, by whom and even what other MS products are using SSRS, such as SQL Server Management Studio, SharePoint, IIS, OCS and Dynamics. I'll provide a "stem to stern" walkthrough of creating reports, deploying them to the server, securing them, and demonstrating the end-user experience. I'll also show how to deploy the existing "Report Packs" available from Microsoft for other products.

• In the second segment, I'll walk through the architecture, tools and processes involved in authoring, deploying and managing in an SSRS 2005 environment. This will include the report designer in Visual Studio/BIDS, the web-based report manager, the underlying IIS-hosted web services, SharePoint-integrated mode (added in SP2) and command-line utilities. While I'll build a number of reports in this segment, I do not intend to spent too much time on basics such as layout, instead focusing on customizing reports with well-designed datasets, parameters, expressions and best practices. I'll also show server-side techniques to provide flexibility and performance using caching, snapshots and unattended execution.

• In the third segment, I'll explore the wide variety of resources available for learning and teaching SSRS, including what you can do in the classroom to add value to your teaches of (currently) 2792 and 2797. This will include additional topics omitted from MOC but frequently asked about by delegates.

• In the last segment, I'll look at what's changing in SSRS 2008 from a tools and infrastructure standpoint, most notably the new Report Designer application and the move away from IIS.