SSRS 2016 Automate deployment to SQL Server 2008R2 using rs.exe

Question

Currently the reports we have are written using Visual Studio 2012 and SQL Server 2008 R2. We also use the RS.exe utility to automate the deployment of our reports to our different environments.

We are looking at jumping to Visual Studio 2017 and using the newest SSRS project templates, etc. We can change the target SQL Server version as part of the project settings and deploy back to the SQL Server 2008 R2 instance fine within Visual Studio.

The problem is that it seems that the automation tool (rs.exe) doesn't have the ability to specify the Target server version and as such we can't use it to push any reports automatically. This kind of defeats the purpose of even starting to use Visual Studio 2017 UNTIL we upgrade our SQL Server to 2016.

Are there any workarounds to allow us to use VS 2017 and continue to AUTOMATE the push of reports into the older SQL Server 2008 R2? Or is the only option to deploy directly from VS 2017 using the Target SQL Server edition setting.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Using ReportingServicesTools could help you with the automatic deployment. Build the report with VS as you see fit and set the version in VS. Then, use the script to copy from where your .rdl files are to the API of the SSRS server.