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Features Supported by Reporting Services in SQL Server Express

This topic provides a summary of the features that are available in SQL Server Express with Advanced Services. To learn more about this edition, see SQL Server Express with Advanced Services Features.

Feature Summary

SQL Server Express provides the following Reporting Services functionality:

  • On-demand report processing for each user who views a report. When a user opens a report, the report is initialized, the query is processed, data is merged into the report layout, and the report is rendered into a presentation format.

  • Rendering formats are available for HTML, Acrobat, and Excel.

  • Report data sources must be SQL Server relational databases that run locally in SQL Server Express.

  • Report server management and report viewing are supported through Report Manager.

  • Configuration is supported through the Reporting Services Configuration tool.

  • Rs.exe, rsconfig.exe, and rskeymgmt.exe command line utilities are available in SQL Server Express.

  • Windows Authentication and predefined roles are used to map existing group and user accounts to a named collection of operations.

Unsupported Features

Other editions of SQL Server include a larger set of Reporting Services features. The following list describes the features that are documented in SQL Server Books Online, but cannot be used in this edition:

  • Scheduled report processing, caching, snapshots, subscriptions, and delivery are not supported.

  • Analysis Services, Oracle, XML, SAP, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), OLE DB, and ODBC data sources are not supported.

  • Remote data sources are not supported. Reports that are hosted in a SQL Server Express report server must retrieve SQL Server relational data from a local SQL Server Express Database Engine instance.

  • Ad hoc reporting through semantic models and Report Builder is not supported.

  • TIFF (Image), XML, and CSV rendering extensions are not supported.

  • The Reporting Services API extensible platform for delivery, data processing, rendering, and security is not supported.

  • Custom authentication extensions and custom role assignments are not supported. You must map existing Windows domain user and group accounts to predefined role definitions.

  • Custom report items are not supported.

  • Managing a long-running report process is not supported. Specifically, you cannot use the Manage Jobs feature in Report Manager to stop report processing.

  • Scale-out deployment is not supported.

  • SharePoint integrated mode is not supported.

If you are using the User Instances feature (also known as "Run As Normal User" or RANU) in SQL Server Express, remember that the data source will not be available over remote connections. This means that if you configure a report data source for the User Instances feature, remote users who access the report will get the following error:

"An error has occurred during report processing. Cannot create a connection to data source '<datasourcename>'. For more information about this error, navigate to the report server on the local server machine, or enable remote errors."

In addition, the report server log file will contain the following entry:

Cannot create a connection to data source '<datasourcename>'. ---> System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: User does not have permission to perform this action.

To avoid these errors, do not set the User Instance property in the connection string or in the Advanced Properties dialog box when defining the connection.