Error when trying to run report through SQL Server Management Studio

Question

I'm testing creating reports with SQL Server. I've never used the reporting service before. I opened up "SQL Server Business Intelligence Development Studio" (which appears to be a stripped down version of Visual Studio 2008 with a different gui) and followed an msdn tutorial against some dummy data I dropped into a table. I can preview the table and it's just a simple chart that counts the occurrence of each of 7 values (weekdays) in the table. It works in the preview window.

Here's the part where it gets confusing. I opened up SQL Server Management Studio 2008 R2 and right clicked on the database (and instance, and databases dir, and table dir, and the specific table) and selected Reports -> Custom Reports and navigated to the rdl file generated by the above project. And got the following error.

An error occurred during local report processing. (Microsft.ReportViewer.WinForms)
Additional Information:
The definition of the report 'Main Report is invalid. (Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common)
The report definition is not valid. Details: The report definition has an invalid target namespace 'http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2008/01/reportdefinition' which cannot be upgraded. (Microsoft.ReportViewer.Common)

Obviously I'm missing something, but have no idea what. I'm guessing I'm not supposed to open the report like I'm trying to do, but I have no direction on what the proper way to do it is. The msdn tutorial at this point basically said "Congratulations! Now you have a report." While I'm left thinking, "Great, now what do I do with it?" Ideally I'd like to set it up to run a schedule, but I can't figure enough out to get that far.

Answer 1

Visual Studio is used to develop SSRS reports, to deploy them you need to install the Reporting Services server components of SQL Server. This consists of Report Server databases, a SSRS web service and a web-based front end (which can be either Sharepoint or the included "Report Manager" application depending on which set up you choose). Once you have a report server set up, you can deploy reports to it from Visual Studio using the URL of the report server (which you specify in the VS project settings).

You should probably start by looking at these articles:

Default Configuration for a Native Mode Installation (Reporting Services)

Publishing Reports to a Report Server

Answer 2

Usually you deploy the report to a server. I'm not sure what exactly you are trying to accomplish. Here is a limitation when using custom reports in SQL server Management Studio

•You can run custom reports in a context that does not produce the expected values. For example, you can run a report about replication in the context of a database that is not involved in replication, or run a report as a user who does not have permission to access information that is required to generate an accurate report. The creator of the custom report is responsible for the validity of the report structure and its context."

I think most of time you want to deploy the report to a server so anyone can view it with the link. You can do that by right clicking the Project File and selecting properties and changing the target Server URL.