How to upgrade SSRS 2005 report project for use with modern SSRS versions?

Question

I have installed SQL Server Data Tools for Business Intelligence (SSDT-BI) version 14.0.61705.170 and SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) version 14.0.608.142.

I'm trying to upgrade and edit a collection of older report files for use with the current version of SSRS. The project upgrades (apparently) ok, and the reports are viewable in the SSDT-BI report editor.

But whenever I try to save any of these reports, an error message box pops up which says "Unknown Report Version: 9.0".

I suspect it's because the RDL files are so old, but I don't see 9.0 anywhere in the RDL file so I'm not sure what I need to tweak to make the files savable again. Perhaps an XML schema name or similar?

The main namespace in the RDL files is currently http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2005/01/reportdefinition

"Version 9.0" probably corresponds to SQL Server 2005 since that was the major version number of that release of SQL Server, and 2005 can be found in the schema namespace.

This document says that:

Reports that were created in any previous version of Reporting Services can be upgraded. This includes the following versions:

• SQL Server 2008
• SQL Server 2008 R2
• SQL Server 2012
• SQL Server 2014

So... how can I upgrade these reports for full compatibility with modern SSRS versions?

Answer 1

I downloaded "SQL Server 2012 Express with Advanced Services" from MSDN and installed the SSRS report editing tools, and then used those to open & save the reports. (It also works to download SSDT-BI for Visual Studio 2012 (version 11.0.5583.0) by following links on this Microsoft web page. This installs a different version of the SSRS editors, based on VS2012 instead of VS2010.)

This upgraded the .rdl files from the 2005 reports schema to the 2008 reports schema (I suppose there were no actual schema changes between SSRS 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012).

The upgraded reports could then be opened and edited in the SQL Server 2016 tools, which upgrades them again, to the SSRS 2016 schema.