SSRS 2005: How do I make available varbinary data for download in a report?

Question

Hi,

SSRS newbie question here...

I have a table where one column is varbinary(max) data. I would like to make a report that makes this data available for download as a hyperlink so the user can just click on the item and get a file download dialog for the binary data. In this particular case, the binary data happens to be the content of old pdf files, but that shouldn't matter.

I tried searching around but I can't find any pointers on how to do this. It seems to me that it should be possible. There are ways to display images in a report using varbinary data, so it makes sense that one should be able to make arbitrary binary data downloadable on a report, right?

Answer 1

No, it is not possible as far as I can tell. Don't see anyway to do this.

The work-around that I used was to create a simple asp.net page to serve the binary content through some URL. I then hyperlinked to that page from the SSRS report giving the right variables in the URL. Works fine for me, YMMV if you have to worry about URL hacking or security issues.