¿Have you ever thought of migrating to Reporting Services 2008… but you weren’t sure to expect?

Before making the decision of migrating your Reporting Services 2000 or 2005 to 2008 (reports, models, data sources…) it is useful to consider the different scenarios that we might find, and understand the way Reporting Services upgrades the reports.

This article contains useful information that can help you to better plan the migration to Reporting Services 2008:

1. Scenarios and support statement.

2. Upgrading reports from RS 2005 to RS 2008 using the Report Manager.

3. Upgrading reports from the Report Designer.

4. Upgrade Advisor.

5. Useful links with the steps to perform the migration and upgrading to RS 2008.

1. Scenarios and support statement

2. Upgrading reports from RS 2005 to RS 2008 using the Report Manager

1. When running a report from the Report Manager, Reporting Services checks internally the versión which the report was created.

2. If the report was created with RS 2005, RS will try to convert it to 2008 format (creating an intermediate format). If there were errors during the upgrade process, the report will be flagged to be run by the RS 2005 engine instead, the execution of the report will be restarted.

3. If the report is flagged for execution in RS 2005 engine, it will not try to upgrade it ever again, and it will be executed with the RS 2005 engine (it will not benefit of the new memory improvement of the RS 2008 engine)

3. Upgrading reports from the Report Designer

If you open a report previously created with RS 2005 from the 2008 Report Designer, Reporting Services will try to upgrade the report to 2008. If there was any errors during the upgrade, a message will be shown to the user explaining that there has been errors and it will provide the possibility to continue the upgrade (losing the not allowed functionality) or not.

If you select the option to upgrade the report to 2008, it will create a copy (automatically) of the 2005 version of the report. This copy will be stored in the same folder and it will add the word ¨_ Backup¨ to the file.

If the reports created in 2005 included any Dundas chart, they will be converted without problems as long as the 2008 Dundas version is installed in the machine, and the reports don’t include any unsupported functionality like for example personalized code. The following link describes the unsupported functionality:

Description of the unsupported Dundas features in SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services

https://support.microsoft.com/kb/956028

4. Upgrade Advisor

If what you want is to upgrade a machine with a former installation of Reporting Services, it is a good idea to run the Upgrade Advisor tool. This tool will analyze all the components of SQL installed from previous versions and it will generate a report with all the possible problems and solutions you might find. More information in the link bellow:

Using Upgrade Advisor to Prepare for Upgrades

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144256.aspx

5. Useful links with the steps to perform the migration and upgrading to RS 2008

How to: Upgrade to SQL Server 2008 (Setup)

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms144267.aspx

How to: Migrate a Reporting Services Installation

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143724.aspx

Maria Esteban

Reporting Services Support Engineer