Thread: Getting started using reporting services

Hi Belle,

As with any solution, there are always advantages and disadvantages. Let me see if I can answer your questions.

1. Reporting Services uses Windows security, so access is easy for your Windows users. Also, you don't have to design and write any code for the webpages, the work is done for you. It also includes an option to export report results (in PDF, Excel, or Web Archive).

2. You will need Visual Studio with the reporting plug in to get full use out of Reporting Services. There is talk of a dumbed down designer offered as part of SQL server 2005, but since you don't have that you will need Visual Studio. You will need the service installed on a SQL Server.

3. You can configure security options to the reports and only specified individuals will be able to create reports and publish them to the server. Database security is not configured through this. What we did in my shop was create a Report user on the database. This user has only the needed access to run the reports, but we don't uses Windows Authentication for our database connections, so this was a necessary step for us. This way anyone creating reports can use that connection to access the database, and if you are the administrator you can configure that user to read-only access.

4. I don't know for sure if having a virtual server on your SQL server is a problem at all. I'm afraid I have to defer to the Microsoft folks on that one.

I hope this has been a help, but please let me know if there is anything else I can answer for you!