What minimum rights do you need?

  • To administer a reporting services server?

    Must you be sysadmin?

    We have a programmer who has been experimenting with reporting services, but making this individual a server administrator is creating great anxiety among the database admins.

    I guess you need to be able to specify data sources and assign users to roles, but is there some middle ground to let this person set those things up without being the functional equivalent of a dba?

    It seems to demand an awful lot of juice to run reports...must the reporting services admin be a dba?

    thanks a lot

    drew

  • I don’t understand why a developer wants to have admin right into reporting services instance. I wouldn’t give admin right in productions for sure. However, in Test environment is different case and it depends company security policy and varies from one company to another.

    The developer should be suing BIDS or Visual studio to develop/deploy reports or any BI stuff. Give him the correct permissions of the data source he is trying to play with in the OLTP or the OLAP databases. Hope that helps!

  • drew.georgopulos (10/25/2011)


    To administer a reporting services server?

    Must you be sysadmin?

    To administer the server... in short: Yes. To administer the reports, no. There's specific security in reporting services that you can let them administer the reporting aspects.

    I guess you need to be able to specify data sources and assign users to roles, but is there some middle ground to let this person set those things up without being the functional equivalent of a dba?

    No, not really.

    It seems to demand an awful lot of juice to run reports...must the reporting services admin be a dba?

    If he's an admin, it's meant to be treated like an administrator. SSRS is not completely separated from the rest of the engine. Either your DBAs have to learn it or you're going to need to hand off a solid amount of control.


    - Craig Farrell

    Never stop learning, even if it hurts. Ego bruises are practically mandatory as you learn unless you've never risked enough to make a mistake.

    For better assistance in answering your questions[/url] | Forum Netiquette
    For index/tuning help, follow these directions.[/url] |Tally Tables[/url]

    Twitter: @AnyWayDBA

  • thank you both very much for your help and advice, i appreciate it

    drew

  • Make him the sysadmin and content manager for the sql server reporting services !!!!

  • drew.georgopulos (10/25/2011)


    We have a programmer who has been experimenting with reporting services, but making this individual a server administrator is creating great anxiety among the database admins.

    Don't do it. Set him up with a copy of the Developer's Edition or VM a Dev box for him top play on.

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Thanks a lot Mr. Moden;

    I was strongly cautioned by Evil Kraig F's and Omar Ismail's responses, so we've split the difference...development stops at visual studio. once the report is qa'd/uat'd by the ba the dbas do deployment. granted its a little clunky, but there was either an unfortuate over-commitmet of priviliges assumed for SSRS administration, or a misalignment of duties organizationally where programming is at odds with administration; it seems to be making this more difficult than it needs to be, but i think we've settled on a workable division of labor.

  • drew.georgopulos (11/1/2011)


    Thanks a lot Mr. Moden;

    I was strongly cautioned by Evil Kraig F's and Omar Ismail's responses, so we've split the difference...development stops at visual studio. once the report is qa'd/uat'd by the ba the dbas do deployment. granted its a little clunky, but there was either an unfortuate over-commitmet of priviliges assumed for SSRS administration, or a misalignment of duties organizationally where programming is at odds with administration; it seems to be making this more difficult than it needs to be, but i think we've settled on a workable division of labor.

    I was just there for emphasis. Even though I'm careful, I don't even like me having elevated privs if I don't need them. 🙂

    --Jeff Moden


    RBAR is pronounced "ree-bar" and is a "Modenism" for Row-By-Agonizing-Row.
    First step towards the paradigm shift of writing Set Based code:
    ________Stop thinking about what you want to do to a ROW... think, instead, of what you want to do to a COLUMN.

    Change is inevitable... Change for the better is not.


    Helpful Links:
    How to post code problems
    How to Post Performance Problems
    Create a Tally Function (fnTally)

  • Making this person an Admin in SSRS does not require him to have DBO or sysadmin or server admin permissions in the database engine in SQL 2008.

    If this is truly ssrs2008, things have changed significantly.

    You need only assign the permissions for this person to create reports and data sources from Report Manager which is a Web UI. You can't make any of the permissions assignments from the database security context.

    Here are the security roles in SSRS 2008

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

  • drew.georgopulos (10/25/2011)


    To administer a reporting services server?

    Must you be sysadmin?

    We have a programmer who has been experimenting with reporting services, but making this individual a server administrator is creating great anxiety among the database admins.

    No need for him to be a server administrator.

    I guess you need to be able to specify data sources and assign users to roles, but is there some middle ground to let this person set those things up without being the functional equivalent of a dba?

    I wouldn't call it the equivalent of a dba. Content manager in SSRS 2008 is the max perms. And this person couldn't do much more than administer report security, report deploy and the like from the Web UI.

    It seems to demand an awful lot of juice to run reports...must the reporting services admin be a dba?

    Not really. I don't think it requires a lot of juice. You can have content managers that are just that. They would not have any further ability to tune the performance or the queries or server settings. The Content manager really is limited in scope.

    Now if you added that person to local admin or to sysadmin you would have problems. But there is no need to do that.

    Keep in mind that administering SSRS is also a bit more than just publishing reports and data sources and granting perms to view reports (which is all it seems this person is interested in doing). The DBA actually has the bulk of the work by granting proc exec, db access to the user in the data source connection, configuring the ini and reporting configs are just a few of those things (not to forget indexes).

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

  • Thanks very much for explaining it to me, and for opening up the other considerations too; I have a lot to learn myself.

  • you're welcome

    Jason...AKA CirqueDeSQLeil
    _______________________________________________
    I have given a name to my pain...MCM SQL Server, MVP
    SQL RNNR
    Posting Performance Based Questions - Gail Shaw[/url]
    Learn Extended Events

Viewing 12 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply