This article contains brief tutorial about SSRS 2008. In case you’re looking SSRS 2008 hosting, you can try ASPHostDirectory as the alternatives. Only with $ 3.99/month to get hosting with us. Don’t waste this opportunity.

With the introduction of SQL Server 2008 R2 and Vista (Windows 7 as well) came new enhanced security features. One of the features included was User Access Control (UAC) that will assist in prohibiting unauthorized entry into SQL Server Reporting Services. Although UAC can be disabled, working within the parameters of the new technology will strengthen the security within your company infrastructure.

There is a new process that you may run into involving SSRS for SQL Server 2008 R2 when used with Vista and/or Windows 7.  There are new UAC security steps that are used during the validation process for Report Manager.

If you receive the following error when trying to make the connection to your Report Manager:

 

Follow the steps below:

Go to the report server and navigate to the following;  Start --> Administrative Tools --> Computer Management. Then Under Local Users and Groups you will see the screen below. Add the NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users  to the SQLServerReportServerUser group

 

Once this is done, open IE browser from the server and go to http://localhost/Reports. This will bring up Report Manager in the Home folder and display a few option. 

From the Report Manager screen, click on Folder Settings, then go add NT AUTHORITY\Authenticated Users to this group on the root folder (This can be substituted for any other group that contains all users that will be allowed access to the Report Manger)

 

Once these steps are completed, you should be able to return to the Vista and/or Win7 PC and access the Report Manager. For further permission, add specific users to each folder as you normally would. As long as Authenticated Users is in the group on the server, then each user within AD should have access once granted within Report Manager

What is so SPECIAL on ASPHostDirectory.com SSRS 2008 Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At ASPHostDirectory, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - ASPHostDirectory gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as ASPHostDirectory will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee - ASPHostDirectory promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called ASPHostDirectory Uptime
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support - if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee - ASPHostDirectory offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple - if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in SSRS 2008 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostDirectory
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!

Problem

Reporting is a common and frequent requirement of any business practice and often reports are developed by business users as well as the IT department of the organization. Data Source and Data Sets are two major entities used in any report development using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) whether the report is developed using Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) or report builder. To keep a track and control of the data access logic implemented on a report level, it becomes very necessary to centralize access to data from the report server for better maintenance, reducing repetitive efforts and efficient use of resources. In this tip we would take a look at how we can address this using SSRS 2008 R2 and BIDS.

Solution

Use of Shared Data Source and Shared DataSets in report development can help to centralize data access using SSRS 2008 R2. Shared Datasets is a new enhancement introduced in SSRS 2008 R2 version, and we will take a look at how this can be implemented and how this can help to improve the reuse of existing logic. We will be using the term report level dataset or data source and shared dataset or datasource frequently in the discussion ahead. By report level data source or dataset, it means a dataset or data source that is embedded in the report and is available only to the report in which it is created. Also please keep in mind that this article assumes some working level of knowledge of SSRS.

To get an idea of the problem in question, follow the below steps to create an exercise which will help us get a view of the problem in question.

1) Create a new SSRS project using BIDS and name it something relevant.

2) Create a shared data source as shown in the below screenshot, by right-clicking the Shared Data Sources folder in the solution explorer pane and selecting Add New Data Source.



3) Create a shared dataset as shown in the below screenshot, by right-clicking on Shared Datasets folder and selecting Add New Dataset. Keep in mind that shared datasets can be created only from a shared data source and they have the extension of ".rsd".



4) Create three different reports named SharedRep1, SharedRep2 and SharedRep3.

5) In SharedRep1 report create a dataset from the Shared Dataset as shown in the below screenshot. As you will be creating a report level dataset from the shared dataset, you will not be required to create an embedded data source at the report level.



6) For SharedRep2 report, create a report level data source from the shared data source and a dataset embedded at report level from the same. And for SharedRep3 report, create a data source and dataset at the report level. After you have done this, the report data pane should look like the below screenshot. Sections marked as 1, 2, and 3 represent the Report Data section of reports SharedRep1, SharedRep2 and SharedRep3 respectively.



7) Add some data on the report and deploy this solution on the report server. Navigate to the report manager and you should be able to find your reports, a folder named Data Source and Datasets. Navigate to the Shared Data Source which we have named "SharedDS" and you should be able to see options as shown in the below screenshot.



All the reports using this data source can be controlled just by managing this single data source. One key advantage of this shared data source is that you can disable processing of all the reports using this data source just by disabling it. Also when reports are moved across environments like Development to QA, and QA to Production, it becomes very easy to manage and control data source access of all the reports using this data source.

8) Navigate to the Shared Datasets folder and click on the shared dataset "SharedDS" and you should be able to see the options as shown in the below screenshot, where Dependent Items tab is selected. This helps to make an impact analysis of reports that would be affected when any change is made to this dataset. Finally, if you have business users who need access to complex datasets created by some complex logic, the same can be shared as a shared dataset and it can be used from Report Builder too by business users.



So in summary, a Shared Data Source helps to control and centralize data source connections of multiple reports using a single connection and thus making maintenance easier. And Shared Datasets help to centralize and reuse dataset logic, for IT Developers and Business Users of any organization. Follow the next steps mentioned below to experiment with the results of the above exercise.

Next Steps

1. Disable the shared data source, and check which reports still continue to execute. Try changing the reports data source to the shared data source for those reports which still continue to execute.

2. Try using the shared dataset from Report Builder 3.0 for a new report.

What is so SPECIAL on ASPHostDirectory.com SSRS 2008 Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At ASPHostDirectory, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - ASPHostDirectory gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as ASPHostDirectory will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee - ASPHostDirectory promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called ASPHostDirectory Uptime
- 24/7-based Support - We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support - if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee - ASPHostDirectory offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple - if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in SSRS 2008 Hosting - Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostDirectory
- Daily Backup Service - We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration - With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!

You can configure a deployment of SQL Server Reporting Services to work with a deployment of Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. You must perform configuration steps on both a report server and a deployment of the SharePoint product or technology before users can publish reporting documents to SharePoint libraries and get report viewing and management services on SharePoint sites. The configuration process establishes server connection information; therefore, it is important that you follow the steps in order.

Overview of Configuration Steps on a Report Server

To configure a report server for SharePoint integration, you must have an existing stand-alone report server or a scale-out deployment. You must perform the following tasks on the report server:

1. Create a report server database in SharePoint integrated mode.
This sets server properties on the report server and activates a new SOAP report server management endpoint that is used for integrated operations. Use the Reporting Services Configuration tool to create the database.

2. For deployments that include a SharePoint server farm, install a Windows SharePoint Services Web front-end on the report server computer. The Web front-end joins the report server computer to a SharePoint farm. Installing the Web front-end on the report server computer is only necessary if you deploy the report server and the SharePoint technology instance on separate computers.

3. For deployments that include placing the SharePoint databases on the same computer as the report server, configure the Report Server service to run under a domain account. This step is only necessary if the report server and application

About the Report Server Database

A report server database provides internal storage for one or more report server instances. A report server database can support native mode operations or SharePoint integration mode, but not both. The contents in the database are mode-specific and are not interchangeable across server modes. If you create a report server database to support SharePoint integrated mode, you cannot automatically convert or migrate the database to run with a native mode report server instance later. A report server database is used in the following ways depending on the server mode:

- When created for native mode operations, the report server database is the sole repository for persistent data used by the report server.

- When created for SharePoint integrated mode, the report server database stores server properties, report execution snapshots, report history, subscription definitions, and schedules. It stores a secondary copy of reports, report models, shared data sources, and resources to improve processing performance on the server. Primary storage for report documents is in the SharePoint content databases.

Creating a report server database for SharePoint integrated mode is an important first step in configuring the report server for SharePoint integration. You can use the Reporting Services Configuration tool to create the report server database and configure the connection to the report server. Only the report server connects to the report server database. The Windows SharePoint Services or Office SharePoint Server instance never connects to or retrieves data from the report server database.

About Report Server Scale-out Deployment and SharePoint Integrated Mode

If you are integrating a report server scale-out deployment with a SharePoint server farm, all report server instances that are part of the deployment must run in SharePoint integrated mode. You cannot have a combination of server modes in the same scale-out deployment. Furthermore, you must create a single point of entry to the scale-out deployment (that is, a URL that resolves to a virtual IP for an NLB cluster on which the report server instances are installed).

About Multiple Report Server Instances and SharePoint Integrated Mode

If you are installing multiple instances of Reporting Services on a single computer, but only configuring one of those instances for SharePoint integrated mode, be sure to do the following:

- Ensure that all instances of Reporting Services are the same version. SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) introduces an updated version of the Reporting Services Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) provider. You cannot have SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) and pre-SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) versions on the same computer. Therefore, it is necessary that all report server instances run SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) or later, even if you do not require SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) features for all of the instances.

- If you run SQL Server 2008 Setup for each report server instance at different times, restart the WMI service after you install the second instance of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS).

Overview of Configuration Steps on a SharePoint Server

To configure integration on the server running the SharePoint product or technology, you must do the following:

1. Download and install the Reporting Services Add-in for SharePoint Technologies.
The add-in installs program files and application pages, including pages that you open in Central Administration to set the report server URL and other integration settings. You can specify report server integration settings for a SharePoint farm or a stand-alone SharePoint Web application.

2. Activate the report server feature if you did not install the add-in on a root site collection.

3. Use SharePoint Central Administration to configure report server integration. Configuration settings include specifying a single report server URL, setting an authentication type on requests directed to the report server, granting database access permissions to the Report Server service account.

4. Optionally, in SharePoint Central Administration, you can set report server defaults that enable logging, ad hoc reporting, and limits for report history and time-out values.

SharePoint products and technologies can be deployed as a farm or as a stand-alone server. A farm contains one or more virtual servers, where each virtual server is a SharePoint Web application. A report server integrates at the farm level. From the perspective of storage integration, there can only be one report server database for a farm. You can use SharePoint Central Administration to manage integration settings for all the servers in the farm.

Each SharePoint Web application in a farm can be configured to use different authentication providers. This does not affect report server integration in any way. The report server deployment will handle requests for each server in the farm regardless of the authentication provider it uses.

Each Web application has a default top-level site. You can set permissions differently on each top-level site to vary the availability of report server items and operations across all the servers in a farm.

Service Account Configuration

A report server is implemented as a single Windows service that runs under a built-in account or a local or domain Windows user account. In SharePoint integrated mode, the service must connect to the SharePoint content databases with write and execute permissions. Because the service connects to the SharePoint content databases, the account that you use to run the service will have different requirements depending on whether remote connections are used and whether the report server URL proxy endpoint connection uses Windows integrated security or Trusted Account mode.

About SharePoint Service Account Configuration

Service account recommendations for Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server state that for a server farm deployment you should run the application pool process as a domain user account, and not as Network Service. Although a domain user account is recommended, it is not required. However, it is important to realize that if you configure a SharePoint Web application to run as Network Service, and the report server is on a remote computer, you will encounter errors when accessing reports and report server features from a SharePoint site if the report server URL proxy endpoint connects in Trusted Account mode.

What is so SPECIAL on ASPHostDirectory.com Sharepoint Hosting?

We know that finding a cheap, reliable web host is not a simple task so we’ve put all the information you need in one place to help you make your decision. At ASPHostDirectory, we pride ourselves in our commitment to our customers and want to make sure they have all the details they need before making that big decision.

We will work tirelessly to provide a refreshing and friendly level of customer service. We believe in creativity, innovation, and a competitive spirit in all that we do. We are sound, honest company who feels that business is more than just the bottom line. We consider every business opportunity a chance to engage and interact with our customers and our community. Neither our clients nor our employees are a commodity. They are part of our family.

The followings are the top 10 reasons you should trust your online business and hosting needs to us:

- FREE domain for Life - ASPHostDirectory gives you your own free domain name for life with our Professional Hosting Plan and 3 free domains with any of Reseller Hosting Plan! There’s no need to panic about renewing your domain as ASPHostDirectory will automatically do this for you to ensure you never lose the all important identity of your site
- 99,9% Uptime Guarantee – ASPHostDirectory promises it’s customers 99.9% network uptime! We are so concerned about uptime that we set up our own company to monitor people’s uptime for them called ASPHostDirectory Uptime
- 24/7-based Support – We never fall asleep and we run a service that is opening 24/7 a year. Even everyone is on holiday during Easter or Christmast/New Year, we are always behind our desk serving our customers
- Customer Tailored Support – if you compare our hosting plans to others you will see that we are offering a much better deal in every aspect; performance, disk quotas, bandwidth allocation, databases, security, control panel features, e-mail services, real-time stats, and service
- Money Back Guarantee – ASPHostDirectory offers a ‘no questions asked’ money back guarantee with all our plans for any cancellations made within the first 30 days of ordering. Our cancellation policy is very simple – if you cancel your account within 30 days of first signing up we will provide you with a full refund
- Experts in Sharepoint Hosting – Given the scale of our environment, we have recruited and developed some of the best talent in the hosting technology that you are using. Our team is strong because of the experience and talents of the individuals who make up ASPHostDirectory
- Daily Backup Service – We realise that your website is very important to your business and hence, we never ever forget to create a daily backup. Your database and website are backup every night into a permanent remote tape drive to ensure that they are always safe and secure. The backup is always ready and available anytime you need it
- Easy Site Administration – With our powerful control panel, you can always administer most of your site features easily without even needing to contact for our Support Team. Additionally, you can also install more than 100 FREE applications directly via our Control  Panel in 1 minute!

Happy Hosting!