SQL Server Reporting Services earns solid if not stellar marks from early adopters—and you can't beat the price.

Microsoft Corp. recently roiled the already competitive waters of the enterprise database marketplace by announcing the availability of Reporting Services features to its popular SQL Server 2000.

Unlike most ad hoc reporting tools, users of Report Builder do not need to know Structured Query Language (SQL) or anything about joins or grouping to create reports.

Microsoft on Wednesday released free tools to generate business reports from Microsoft's Exchange and customer relationship management applications. It also said that SQL Server 2005, the next ...