Best practice to develop SSRS reports using remote server

Question

Hi All,

We are having an SSRS server configured over a live IP. Before I can start building reports, I want to know

1. What are best practice for developing reports that are easy to deploy
2. How can I maintain SVN copies of my reports
3. I was suggested to create shared data sources, what are they and what are benifits?
4. What are security related best practices regarding the same.

thanks in advance

Answer 1

1. In my experience in working with SSRS reports, I develop reports using Report Builder 3.0 on the local machine. When it is time to deploy the report upload the RDL file directly (Through Report Builder 3.0) Yes, there is a lot of room for improvement here, but I am not currently aware of any really good SSRS deployment tools and are not custom made.
2. When working locally on SSRS files, all the files are linked up to source control to track changes across a team.
3. A Shared Data Source is a separate item stored on the report server that describes a data source connection. I can be reused across multiple reports and subscriptions. This is very useful to have on Development / Beta/ Production reporting servers because you don’t have to re-create connections for each report, and if you keep the data source connection names the same across each box you don’t have to make any changes after you upload your files even though the report may connect to a different database because the connection name is the same. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms159728(SQL.100).aspx
4. Check out this article on security. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms152825.aspx

I hope this helps a little.