CHAPTER 12 DELIVERING BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE WITH SSRSIncorporating SSRS with Microsoft SharePoint 2010
SSRS and SharePoint technologies have progressed and matured similarly. Both have enjoyed growing
acceptance and support from businesses around the world. It was a natural progression, therefore, for
the two technologies to one day come together to form components of the overall Business Intelligence
platform that Microsoft has built over the past several years. Previous support for SSRS in SharePoint
included SSRS Web Parts, which could be installed for SharePoint installations. These Web Parts
provided a means to view published SSRS reports within SharePoint. However, this union was not as
adhesive as many administrators and dashboard designers needed it to be. Management of reports still
fell to the likes of DBAs or report content managers. SQL Server 2005 Service Pack 2 included support for
a fully integrated SSRS and SharePoint infrastructure, whereby reports could be published, managed,
and viewed all within SharePoint. SSRS 2008 and 2008 R2 continued this merger, and many
organizations have adopted this methodology over a native-only SSRS that does not integrate directly
with SharePoint.
This brings us to SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2012 Reporting Services. Although similar to
previous versions in integrating Reporting Services with SharePoint, the installation and configuration
process is very much different. In the latest release of Reporting Services, if you wish to run in SharePoint
integrated mode, you will need to install SharePoint and then install Reporting Services in SharePoint
integrated mode. This process essentially installs Reporting Services on top of SharePoint 2010. This
process differs from prior editions, in that SSRS and SharePoint were separate entities and could be
integrated using a configuration tool.
In this section, you will walk through a SharePoint and SSRS stand-alone installation and deploy to
and view on the SharePoint site the two reports from the previous section, Average Time to Admission
and Referral to Admission Chart:
- First, you will install Microsoft SharePoint 2010 with Service Pack 1 and SSRS
2012 on the same server. - Next, you will deploy reports to the SSRS-integrated server with SharePoint
2010. - Finally, you will create a simple dashboard using SSRS Web Parts.
Installing SharePoint 2010 and SQL Server 2012 on a Stand-Alone
Server
The installation routines for SQL Server 2012 have been greatly enhanced over the years. Specifically,
with SSRS, you maintain the ability to install the core assemblies, but configure the SSRS instance later.
However, in SSRS 2012, you can install SSRS in SharePoint integrated mode directly if you have planned
to roll out SSRS and SharePoint together. For our installation, we chose to install both SSRS 2012 and
SharePoint 2010 on the same server, known as a stand-alone installation. This is the recommended
setup for anyone who wants to familiarize themselves with how the two technologies work together.
Other deployment scenarios, such as multiple-server installations, are also possible and expected in
larger environments, but we chose the stand-alone deployment initially solely for the sake of testing and
training. We would recommend this path for anyone not already familiar with an integrated SSRS and
SharePoint installation.