SSRS 2008 training useful for SSRS 2005 environment?

  • We are using SQL Server Reporting Services 2005 in our shop, and we have no immediate plans to upgrade. We would like to send some of our developers to training, but the only training available is for SSRS 2008.

    Would they get any benefit out of this training? Or, are the differences so great that they would be wasting their time?

    A separate question: can the Report Server database for SSRS 2008 reside on a SQL 2005 database server?

    Thanks for your help!

    Steve

  • For your first question, yes they would get some benefit, but honestly I don't think that much. There were some pretty big changes from 2005 to 2008 in SSRS beginning with the fact that 2008 no longer requires IIS to be installed. The matrix and table controls were combined into the tablix and the interface for designing reports is quite a bit different.

    For your second question, I don't know if a 2008 report server DB could be hosted on 2005. I'm not sure why you'd do that since you need a SQL Server 2008 license anyway so you could install it all on 1 server. Just don't use that server to host anything by SSRS.

  • Thanks, Jack, I appreciate your feedback on the training.

    Regarding the second question, we currently have Reporting Services installed on it's own server, without the database engine. The Reporting Services databases reside on the SQL Servers that are user databases are on. We set things up this way mainly for performance reasons, secondarily for security reasons. It seems to be working out well, although we are still learning.

    After posting the question, we found information on MSDN and on SQL Server Central forums that seems to confirm that the Reporting Services databases for SSRS 2008 can reside on a SQL 2005 server. If anyone has conflicting information, we'd sure like to know.

    Steve

  • No problem.

    I may try out SSRS 2008 DB on 2005 Engine in a VM later. Be an interesting blog post. Can you provide the link to the information you found on MSDN?

  • Sure. It actually wasn't MSDN, it was Books Online, on Technet. Here's the link, http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms157285.aspx.

    The relevant quote is, "SQL Server 2005 or SQL Server 2008 can be used to host the databases. Do not use SQL Server 2000 or earlier versions of SQL Server"

  • Thanks. I just got some feedback on Twitter that you can as well. It is supported back one major version. So 2008 to 2005.

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