Deploying Reports from Development to (Remote) Production Machines

After intial development of some reports on my notebook I will need to deploy them to a production machine remote from my office. In other words I will will not be able to directly from the BI (aka VS) Studio on my notebook.

I had thought that I might be able to simply send the RDL files to the remote site and instruct them to create data sources with the same name (and in the same folders) on the local ReportServer (not the BI Studio) then use the "Upload File" option to upload the RDL files. I have tried this once so far, without success.

The next alternative that I can think of to copy the entire set BI Studio project files to the production server (which should have the BI Studio installed) and deploy normally from there, after changing the TargetServerURL naturally.

Can any one suggest any options?

Dick Campbell

I normally utilise option 2

I create several configurations (1 per environment) then when I need to, just change the configuration from the toolbar dropdown and deploy. No need to manually change the target server every time.

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Hi,

is the Webservice not accessible from your notebook ? If yes, you could deploy the reports with the right click on project -option Deploy, sending the RDL files via WebServervices to the Report Server. If this is not an option for you, I would suggest taking the RDL files and send them over to the guys who can install them by loading them up via the web console.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de

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Thanks Jens,

The second option sounds like the one I am looking for. Can you describe what you mean by "loading up via the web console".

I have tried using "Upload File" from the ReportServer web page but the report would not run even after i checked that tjhere was a working Data Source with the same name on the remote computer. Pehaps i just did something wrong.

Thanks for your reply.

Dick Campbell

|||You will have to reset the datasource to the actual data source in your report server. As the data source gets a GUID during the creation, the Guid of the report datasource and the actual existing might differ.

HTH, Jens K. Suessmeyer.

http://www.sqlserver2005.de|||

I have set up the data source with the same name and in the same folder (with localhost and the same databasename) but I didn't realise that it was identified by a GUID so I suspect that this is where the problem lies.

Thanks again for the help.

Best regards,

Dick Campbell

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With regard to the data source GUID, if you are refering to the GUID in the RDL file, my mistake may have been to create the data source on the production machine (thus generating a new GUID).

Perhaps I should also upload the data source file (I can't remember what the extension for that is) thereby keeping the same GUID.

So I am thinking that the steps could be:-

1. Create the same folder structure (the first time round) on the production machine using the ReportServer UI.

2. Copy the RDL and data source files onto the machine.

3. Upload each file into the appropriate folders, inlcuding the data source (XML) files, again using the Report Server UI.

4 Change data souces to the new environment if necessary. It they are ".\DatabaseName" this may not be necessary.

Any future upgrades can then just be a matter of sending the changed RDL file and uploading over the existing one. Actyally I suppose that they would just have to be copied over the original.

Why not just copy the entire BI Studio project onto the production machine and deploy it locally? I think that this exposes some customers to the BI Studio when they don't really want to know about it and also leads to the possibility of reports being modified in more than one place.