Is it possible to import existing SSRS reports in Visual Studio?

Question

When upgrading a machine, we lost the Visual Studio project that was used to create SSRS reports. The Data Sources and the Reports still exist on the server however. Is there a way to re-create the VS project using what it on the SQL server? Is there a way to create a new Reporting Services project and to import existing Data Sources and Reports in it?

I believe the reports were originally created using VS 2005.

Answer 1

You haven't lost much.

The data sources are not much: the connection string to a database, and possibly settings for caching and authentication. These should be easily recreated.

The report definitions (.rdl files) can be downloaded for each report type, and added to a new Reporting Services project. They will need to be pointed at the newly recreated datasources, but then should be fine.

To download the report files, go to the Reporting Services Report Manager (website.) For a default instance of SQL with default install options this is http://servername/reports/ If you have admin permissions, there you can browse through the reports. Go to the properties of a given report and click the Edit... button. This will download the .rdl through your browser. (In SSRS 2008, the Edit button was changed to "Download...")

You will need to find out what version of SSRS you are running: the different versions of Business Intelligence Developer Studio (BIDS, the SSAS and SSRS version of Visual Studio) create reports for specific versions of SSRS. The reports can be upgraded, but not downgraded or deployed to an older version of SSRS.