Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Full list of available data sources
Data sources use credentials to authenticate with the source
system. Credentials can be stored with the data source or
determined at runtime. Some Reporting Services features,
such as subscriptions and snapshots, require a data source
with stored credentials. We will cover credentials in more
detail toward the end of this chapter in the section on security.
There are two types of data sources: shared and embedded. A shared data source exists
as a standalone object outside of the SSRS report and can be reused and referenced by
multiple SSRS reports. An embedded data source is specific to a single SSRS report.
If you open an SSRS report file in a text editor, you can find a section (shown in the
following screenshot) that contains the details of all the data sources included in the
report. Notice that the snippet for the shared data source (
DataSource2
) only includes
the information needed to locate the shared data source object on the report server,
while the snippet for the embedded data source includes a connection properties
section with all the information needed to connect to the source system.
XML code of SSRS report showing references to embedded dataset (top) and shared dataset (bottom)
