Comparing AX 2012 Reporting with Standard SSRS

I have been a Business Intelligence (BI) consultant for a couple of years, and I have worked with the whole suite of Microsoft BI products:  Reporting Services (SSRS), Integration Services (SSIS) and Analysis Services (SSAS).  Dynamics AX 2012; however, was an alien entity to me.  When I was asked to do reporting in Dynamics AX, I thought that since this is a Microsoft product that uses SSRS and a SQL Server database, this should be a pretty standard task based on my experience.  While I was correct from a front-end design point of view, actually getting the data to the report was quite a different task.

The first noticeable difference is the setup.  AX 2012 uses Visual Studio 2010 as opposed to Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) to setup its reports.  BIDS leverages Visual Studio 2008 to launch and run SSRS and you make all of your connections, data sets and parameters directly in the report designer.  Visual Studio 2010 uses a tree view to manage all your data sets and parameters.  These objects must be added, modified or refreshed in the tree to translate over to the report designer. Changes can be made in report designer like in BIDS but they will not translate back to the tree and the changes will not stick.  BIDS creates an RDL file that can be reopened and edited.  With Dynamics AX 2012, everything is stored in the AOT and brought to the local machine by using temporary folders.