SQl reporting services is bound to a SQL-server installation. You can set up reporting services on another machine, fi for development , but the setup has some flaws. It took me some blogreading and guesswork to get it done.
- The setup needs to do some fiddling in the sql instance (create / alter a db). It needs the credentials of a sa-level user to get that done. In name one of the dialogs gives you the opportunity to enter them. This blog post tells you that that does not work. And describes how to pass the desired credentials in the command line. Which works fine as long as you pass the full path to the msi-file. Like setup /i D:\ENGLISH\SQL2000\REPORTING_SERVICES\DEV\SETUP\rsrun.msi rssetupaccount=sa rssetuppassword= (bad sql instance,user sa has no password..)
- A second hurdle is another page in the setup which starts about a webfarm and asks for a servername. Woolly language, it's not clear what they want. What will work is entering the name of the SQLserver followed by the path of the reporting services virtual home directory. Like Brochis\ReportServer. Still don't see what that has to do with a webfarm...
Now a succesfull setup is just one error away. Something vague, perhaps specific to my network. Clicked it away and reporting services were working.
Run the report services service pack 2 after this. Else existing apps (which don't use rs) will keep popping up annoying errormessages telling you rs is not properly initialized. My sp2 setup ran without a glitch, can't garantee yours will. With Crystal Reports in mind I keep my fingers crossed..:)