Deployment and Version Support in SQL Server Data Tools (SSRS)

SQL Server Data Tools supports the following scenarios:

• Open report definitions (*.rdl) and report server projects (*.rptproj).

• Build report definitions.

• Preview reports in Report Designer.

• Deploy reports to report servers.

Configuration and Deployment Properties

SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) supports project configurations. A project configuration consists of a set of properties that specify locations and behaviors when a project is built either as a step in previewing or deploying reports. To learn more about project configurations, see the Visual Studio documentation.

Use project configurations to control the upgrade of report definitions to schema versions compatible with target report servers. The properties controlled by project configurations include the target report server, the folder where the build process temporarily stores report definitions for preview and deployment, and error levels.

Reports are built before they are rendered as previews in Report Designer or deployed to the report server.

You set the configuration properties in the SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) Project Property dialog box.

The build and deployment properties include:

• OutputPath is a build property that identifies the path of folders to store the report definition used in build verification, deployment, and preview of reports.

• ErrorLevel is a build property that identifies the severity of the build issues that are reported as errors. Issues with severity levels less than or equal to the value of ErrorLevel are reported as errors; otherwise, the issues are reported as warnings. For more information, see The “Report Validation and Error Levels” section in Design Reports with Report Designer (SSRS).

• TargetServerVersion is a deployment property that identifies the expected version of SQL Server Reporting Services that is installed on the target report server specified in the TargetServerURL property.

  Note

  The use of TargetServerVersion to control upgrading and reverting of report definitions is supported only between SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services (SSRS) and SQL Server 2008 R2 Reporting Services. This is not supported for earlier versions of Reporting Services such as SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS).

When you specify the earlier version of SQL Server Reporting Services in the Project Property dialog box, the reports are not reverted automatically to the earlier version. As such, a Report Server project can contain reports from the two different versions of SQL Server. When the Report Server project is deployed, all reports in the project are converted to the version specified in TargetServerVersion.

You can add more than one project configuration to a project; each one is used for a different scenario, such as deploying to different versions of report servers.

For more information, see Set Deployment Properties (Reporting Services) and Project Property Pages Dialog Box.

Supported Versions

The following table describes the supported versions for authoring and publishing reports in SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT).

For more information about opening reports in a previous version of the report definition schema, see Upgrade Reports. For more information about specific report definition schemas, see Report Definition Language Specification.

See Also

Concepts

Deployment and Version Support in SQL Server Data Tools (SSRS)