Is web server mandatory?

  • Hi, my company is assessing Reporting Services and we are thoroughly confused by Microsoft's marketing claims and the actual product...please enlighten on a couple of points.

    1) is a Web Server mandatory to build/distribute reports for Reporting Services?

    2) why are certain people so excited about Reporting Services when it seems very similar to what Crystal Reports have been doing?

    3) is it possible to dynamically build a report from scratch in code?

  • A quick answer to #2: price.

    Regards,

    Scott

  • Another quick answer to #2. It uses components that should be familiar to any Microsoft shop. IIS/SQL Server/.NET Framework.

    K. Brian Kelley
    @kbriankelley

  • you don't need a web server to build reports, but it is necessary for distributing them in the way intended. Otherwise you would have to query the ReportServer database, but some of the information is encrypted.

    you can write an RDL report file from code: see Microsoft Knowledge Base articlae 'Walkthrough - Generating RDL Using the .NET Framework'.

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