Reading Tony Davis blog posting on Simple Talk titled The SSRS 2008 Minefield I raised the question with Microsoft here in Canada. They seem to have some information that doesn’t actually “resolve the incompatabilities” but at least helps clarify some of the gray areas so maybe we don’t fall into the same minefield.
RS 2005 RDL, RS 2000 RDL
- Can publish directly to 2008 Server using Report Manager or SOAP API
- 2005 RDLÂ will be preserved (not upgraded)
Report Designer 2000
- Not supported – cannot deploy reports to a 2008 server
Report Designer 2005 (BIDS 2005)
- Authors 2005 RDLs
- Can deploy reports to 2008 Server
Report Designer 2008 (BIDS 2008)
- Will upgrade 2000 and 2005 RDLs to 2008
- Authors 2008 RDLs
- Deploy to 2008 Server only.
VS 2005 Viewer and VS 2008 Viewer
- Can view 2008 server report
- 2008 RDLs are not supported in local mode
VS 2005 and VS 2008 RDLC Designer
- Authors SQL 2005 RDLs
- Does not support 2008 RDLs
Seems like it has everything to do with “how” you develop your reports – good old Visual Studio (the plain version) might be the safest option.
VS Local support for RDL 2008 format will be in VS 2010 ReportViewer which is currently available in the Beta2 release.
It is also important to make a distinction between deploying a new version of the SQL Server database in a customer environment and deploying reports that are part of an application. An application (using Report Viewer from VS 2008) could report from a database that is SQL Server 2005 (for customers that are standardized on SQL Server 2005 ) and report of the SQL Server 2008 (for customers who demand full encryption).
Many thanks to Nick at Microsoft for clarifying some of this stuff!!!
