Reporting Services spawns an error if reporting services database is unavilable

Reporting Services databases are stored in the Reporting Services engine and for SQL Server 2016, you can find them in SQL Server Managment Studio 2016.

If you try to access Reporting Services URL, you will get the following error if the SQL Server hosting Reporting Services has not started.

Here is the error.



Here is the (start/stop) state of the related Database engine.

Here is the Reporting Services after starting the Database engine.

Binary images in tables and Power BI

I have tried couple of times to display a table with a column containing images (binary) such as those you find in the Employees and Categories table in Northwind database. Power BI does not seem to support binary files.

For Power BI to claim superiority over competitor products Microsoft should come up with a fix to do it easily (not some programmatic trick). After all the strength of Power BI is its ease of use.

In my books on Reporting Services I did manage to display using a complicated expression using the expression builder. I am not sure whether such an approach would work in Power BI. I will try it sometime.

Images from Categories table in a Report Builder authored report:

This is a serious security breach problem with SQL Server Reporting Services 2016

I have been having problem accessing the Web Service URL and Web Portal in Microsoft Edge as well as Mozilla Firefox-both the latest versions.

Microsoft Edge accepts the authentication after three times  entering the same Username/Password with the third time going to the web address. However it does not load and there is a message but with no instructions to go further.

In Mozilla entering the Web Service URL or Web Portal URL in the address with the same authentication information does not even go to the address. There were no messages.

Using the Report Builder you can connect to the Report Server and view the reports; datasources; report parts etc.

These URLs being crucial to work with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS), this is totally unacceptable.

What is more serious is that the Reporting Server has no security! When I enter the site address in a Chrome browser, I am not even asked for authentication dialog and I am taken straight to the server. This should not happen. I could even do a ListChildren command. Both Web Service URL and Web Portal URL do not require authentication. Wow!

I thought perhaps it has something to do with Chrome, but no. When I tried with Internet Explorer (on Windows 10) it was amazing. Asked for no authentication, web addresses were accessible.

I think this is something to do with Windows 10 and perhaps not that of Reporting Services.

I am not new to Reporting Services as I have written about them previously.

Notes after the original post (11/2/2017):

I have looked at Internet Options and I do not think these are the reasons why Internet Explorer displays the Web Service URL and Web Portal URL without asking for authentication. The first two images are for Internet Explorer and the last one for Microsoft Edge.

These two are for IE 11. The Web Service URL come sup immediately without prompting for authentication.

This one for Microsoft Edge (latest version)

The Microsoft Edge requests authentication information and succeeds only on the third time (each time same information is provided) but the Web Service URL does not load.

Report Builder connects to Web Service URL but not the Edge browser

It appears strange that the Report Builder can connect to Report Server and access reports but not the browser.

https://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2017/10/problem-with-sql-server-reporting.html

Fix for the rsErrorOpeningConnection in SSRS 2016

The error, rsErrorOpeningConnection has been asked many times in almost
all versions of SQL Server Reporting Services starting from SSRS 2008. Various
reasons have been given. The error message hints at what may be wrong.

In the present case, a simple report with embedded data source  was created in Report Builder 3 by the creator owner who is also the local administrator. This report was saved to the
Report Server (also gets uploaded to the Web Portal front-end).

The report is processed in the Report Builder without any error.

If the Where_2 report is double clicked this is the message displayed after correct authentication
by the local administrator.

The Data Source is shown in the following and the report gets correctly displayed in
the Report Builder and it can be saved to the Report Server as seen above.

The rsErrorOpeningConnection arises because of the credentials to the Data Source is not
properly configured (what is shown is the default). Review the credentials for the data source:

When you make the proper entries for the report as shown here:

The error goes away.

 The SQL Server 2016 SP1, the Report Builder 3 are both on a Dell Laptop with Windows 10 Pro. The Reporting Services configuration is for Native Mode managed by the laptop owner.