Black Belt Administration: Reporting Services Configuration Manager

About the Series …

This
article is a member of the series MSSQL Server Reporting Services.
The series is designed to introduce MSSQL Server Reporting Services (“Reporting
Services”), presenting an overview of its features, with tips and
techniques for real-world use. For more information on the series in general,
please see my initial Database
Journal
article, A New Paradigm for Enterprise Reporting. For the software components, samples and tools
needed to complete the hands-on portion of this article, see BlackBelt
Administration: Linked Reports in Report Manager, another article within this
series.

Introduction

A common
attribute of enterprise reporting systems is their provision for single points
of maintenance for significant aspects of system configuration. Reporting
Services meets the general need for centralized maintenance of reports and
their constituent components by housing them within a central “report catalog,”
facilitating easier report access and management. Reporting Services
provides multiple management options to administrators.

While
many management tasks are most conveniently handled via the Report Manager
Web interface, Reporting Services provides several specialized utilities
to complement this primary application. One of these tools, the Reporting
Services Configuration Manager, provides a central point of Report
Server configuration and ongoing management. In this article, we will
examine how we can use the Reporting Services Configuration Manager to
configure a report server deployment. The tool allows us to manage related
services, and to specify directories, identities, and database connections,
among other details. We will examine each of these capabilities in the
practice session that follows.

The Reporting Services Configuration Manager

The Reporting Services
Configuration Manager provides access to tabs that allow us to work with
and / or monitor the following settings for our report servers:

• Server Status
• Report Server Virtual Directory
• Report Manager Virtual Directory
• Windows Service Identity
• Web Service Identity
• Database Setup
• SharePoint Integration
• Encryption Keys
• Initialization
• Email settings
• Execution Account

As we shall see, we not only
access the various settings via these tabs, but we can also see statuses for
each at a quick glance. We will examine the details of each settings group in
the procedural steps that follow.

Overview the Settings Tabs within the Reporting Services Configuration Manager

Let’s open the Reporting
Services Configuration Manager, to take a look at the pages involved.

The Report
Server Installation Instance Selection dialog appears.

The Reporting Services Configuration
Manager opens for
the designated server. On the top page, we see the Report Server Status
section, which sits atop the Legend. The Legend contains each of
the icons that can be displayed within the various tabs of the Configuration
Manager in the left pane. The Legend defines the various “states”
that the icons show, to make us aware, at a glance, of whether the settings
contained within the tab are configured or not configured, and whether the respective
settings are optional or recommended, or are simply not supported within the
current mode. The Legend appears as shown in Illustration 3.

Let’s
examine each of the tabs in turn to get a detailed understanding of the
settings they support. We will begin with the current “starter” page, Report
Server Status.

Settings Page: Server Status

The
default page, Report Server Status, serves as a point where we can start
or stop the Report Server Windows service. Several Instance
Properties are presented here, including:

• Instance
  Name (MSSQLSERVER
  for a default installation);
• Instance ID (MSSQL.3 for a default installation);
• Initialized (a simple “Yes” or “No”);
• Service
  Status
  (“Running” or “Stopped”)

When
we start or stop the service (the extent of possible activities for this page),
a Task Status section appears in the place of the Legend (shown
in Illustration 3 above). The Report Server Status page,
with Task Status section in place for a recent service start, appears as
depicted in Illustration 4.

We can
navigate to the remaining tabs by clicking each in the left pane of the Reporting
Services Configuration Manager application, as shown in Illustration 5.

Settings Page: Report Server
Virtual Directory

The Report Server Virtual
Directory page supports our specification of a virtual directory for the
report server. By clicking on this tab, we can see the virtual directory
within which the ASP.NET web service for our installation is set to run. In
addition to modifying our choice of virtual directory, we can also specify SSL
settings (including certificate identification, etc.) on this page.

An example of the Report Server
Virtual Directory page is depicted in Illustration 6.

Settings Page: Report Manager
Virtual Directory

We can examine (as well as modify)
the virtual directory within which the Reporting Services Manager lives
using the Report Manager Virtual Directory page. An example of the Report
Manager Virtual Directory page is shown in Illustration 7.

Settings Page: Windows Service
Identity

The Windows Service Identity
page supports our specification of the service account under which the Reporting
Services Windows Service runs. Here we can modify the settings that were
established with the initial installation. (This represents a marked
improvement over the previous version).

An example of the Windows
Service Identity page is depicted in Illustration 8.