Using SSRS for our company's website.

[joejack0330]

Just getting started with SSRS and would like to know if it can be used for our external website or is more designed to be an internal thing? We currently have a lot of .asp pages that basically create pages from our sql servers but was thinking of using ssrs for some of these to give us some more options and create actual reports with barcodes and so on. Thanks, Joe

 

[RiverGuy]

I'm not 100%, and we don't do it here, but I have heard of people using it for publicly accessible websites. One thing to consider besides the additional security precautions you have to account for will be the fact that you may need to license the instance differently (CPU licenses instead of CALs) which could balloon your licensing costs.

Another option to consider would be to develop ASP.Net web applications which use the ReportViewer control. You still get to design SSRS reports, but your external users do not use the Report Manager -- they interact with your custom web pages.

 

[bburnell]

RiverGuy's answer is definitely your best bet. It should also be the cheapest.
~Brett

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Web/.net Programmer & DBA
Central PA

 

[joejack0330]

Thanks for the information, I didn't even think of possible license issues.