RS tiered architecture

I've implemented a solution with application, database and report server on seperate machines. The application is a web app and is Internet facing. What is the best method for executing reports on the RS server that are initiated from the web server? Using URL access requires a login or anonymous access neither of which are desired. Web services works but I loose access to the toolbar. Is there some other way to pull this off where I can let the public access reports and give them access to the toolbar?

Thanks.

Assuming SSRS 2005, the best way will be to use the ASP.NET ReportViewer control since it generates the report on the server and preserves the report interactive features. This article may help to get you started.|||

Thanks.

My understanding is that the Web ReportViewer the report is rendered on the browser not on the server and as such we loose the benefits of server cashing.Does this present a performance issue?

I'll give it a shot.

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My understanding is that the Web ReportViewer the report is rendered on the browser not on the server and as such we loose the benefits of server cashing. Does this present a performance issue?

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Your understanding is incorrect, so it is difficult to gauge the performance issue <s>.

The ReportViewer (web or win) has two modes. One is local, the other is server. But in neither mode would the ReportViewer be rendering in the browser. The difference is whether it is rendering in the RS server or in your web server tier, and also which tier is preparing the data.

In your case it looks like you are going to be using server mode, which means the reports come from the RS server tier and the data is prepared there as well, of course. The web tier hosts the control, requests report pages from the RS server, and sends the full page content for sending to the browser

In local mode the web tier hosts the control *and* the rendering code for the report page(s) without delegating to an RS server.

In local mode, if you are talking about report caching rather than web page, yes you are not going to have it because that is provided by the RS server. But if you are in server mode the RS server is going to decide to deliver a cached report (snapshot) based on its own settings, regardless of the client, as far as I know.

HTH,

>L<

PS To be strictly accurate, in all cases and all types of content a browser also "renders" a web page for display. But how a browser chooses to "render" what a reportcontrol sends is more like how it renders an image downloaded from a server. It doesn't "render" the JPG in the sense of creating it.

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My understanding is that the Web ReportViewer the report is rendered on the browser not on the server and as such we loose the benefits of server cashing. Does this present a performance issue?

We need to clarify what you mean by "render" and "server caching". The VS.NET 2005 ASP.NET report viewer is no much different than an ASP.NET page. It submits report requests to the Report Server on behalf of the user, gets the report presentation, and streams it to the client. This all happens on the server side. As with any web application, it is the browser who renders the HTML content to the user but it is a thin client. As far as the "server caching" I have no idea what benefits you are referring to.