Reporting Services Architecture - Professional SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services - page 49

Now that you have seen the overall picture of the Reporting Services platform, let's dive into each of the
three main components.

Reporting Services XML Web Service
Microsoft chose to use a Web services interfaces to expose the functionality in Reporting Services. This is
important for a couple of reasons. First, it opens the platform to other programming languages. Because
Web services are built on open standards and use XML to transfer information, Reporting Services can
be implemented in almost any platform that supports HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP) and XML.
Second, Web services allow for communication across networks. Using HTTP, messages can be sent
across firewalls and help developers easily implement distributed systems.

So, what does the Reporting Services XML Web service do? As you navigate through the report manager
or SQL Management Studio, you can perform a number of publishing, rendering, and management
functions. All of these functions work against the Reporting Services Web services. Microsoft does not
use any APIs not exposed to the developer. So, you can do anything in code that Microsoft does in
Report Manager or SQL Management Studio.

Here are a few quick examples of where the authors have leveraged the Reporting Services Web services:

❑ Report Deployment: We have used RSS scripts (discussed in Chapter 10) to build automated

setup routines. These routines use the Reporting Services Web services to enumerate a folder
and deploy all report files contained within that folder.

❑ Report Management: We have also used the Reporting Services XML Web service to set up

subscriptions through a custom interface. Often applications require leveraging features of the
Reporting Services platform such as subscriptions without using the Report Manager interface.
Through the Web services, we have embedded a subset of the subscription functionality into
applications.

❑ Report Rendering: The most common use of the Reporting Services XML Web service is adding

report rendering functionality into custom applications. There are three main items that most
report viewers require: report list, parameters selection, and report rendering. All three func-
tions can be performed through Web services to easily build your own look and feel around the
Reporting Services platform. Chapter 12 will go into greater detail on rendering reports within
your own application.

Reporting Services takes advantage of standard Microsoft technologies to implement its Web services
interface. The Web service is hosted within Internet Information Services (IIS) and uses the .NET
Framework. Both components provide the backbone infrastructure. IIS performs web request handling
and routing along with some security features. The .NET Framework provides classes for consuming
and publishing the web services interface.

A full breakdown of the Reporting Services XML Web service is located in Appendix B.