Watusi (SSRS Management Tools Changes for Katmai)

For Katmai we are considering the removal of namespace management (folders, reports, data sources, models) from the Reporting Services Add-in for SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS). In other words, we are considering removing the 'Home' folder under the Reporting Server node in SSMS.

Why the change?

Customer feedback and usage data indicates that Report Manager and/or SharePoint are the tools of choice for managing the Report Server namespace, rather than the SSMS add-in. The design constraints of SSMS mean that any new namespace functionality is significantly expensive to implement, specifically adding support for the namespace in SharePoint integrated mode. For Katmai we want to invest in SharePoint and Report Manager for namespace management and focus on SSMS as a server-level management tool.

This means that the namespace management functions that are not available in Report Manager (Model ClickThrough and Model Item Security) will be added to Report Manager (they are already in SharePoint). Job Management, configuring System properties, and administering Roles will be moved to SSMS. In addition, SSMS will be updated to work in SharePoint mode.

If you have feedback about these changes, please feel free to comment.