Can you reference appSettings in an SSRS report?

Question

Using SSRS2005, can you pull in values specified in the SSRS Web.Config file (think appSettings)? I'm needing to build up a dynamic hyperlink in a series of reports and would like this to be based on a value set in a config file.

At present, it seems my only options are to:

1. Update the hardcoded variable in each report that is building up the links blech
2. Store the value in a dedicated configuration table and then query that

I could live with #2 above, but would like to avoid having to create yet another table to store this information.

Answer 1

I don't believe there is an out of the box way to access files from reports. Here are a few other options to add to your list:

1. Create a custom assembly that either has the values or looks them up in some configuration file (i.e. xml file). Going down this path will probably open up areas where you need to modify the security settings.
2. To build off of your configuration table idea... one thing we ended up having to do was create a fairly generic table that represented the appSettings format of a .NET config file. The appSettings is nothing more than a name/value pair. As a table, this pretty much translates to two fields (name, value). We then use this table to hold all sorts of config based options that would otherwise belong in a appSettings section of a config file.

I hope this provides some help. Good luck!