ReportBuilder won't download on client computer

Brad — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 13:57:01 GMT

I've just been investigating Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) and in a word its great! However this post is about fixing a problem I found when trying to use the ReportBuilder from other computer. When you click "ReportBuilder" in the SSRS web-based UI it will fail with a 401 denied error. By default (for security) the "ReportServer" virtual directory doesn't allow anonymous access, and Microsoft's ClickOnce technology doesn't seem to allow you to provide a username and password - fairly limited I think you'll agree.

Anyway on to the solution... if you give anonymous access to the whole virtual directory it will download ok - but when you come to login it will constantly fail, complaining that the Internet guest account doesn't have the required permission - even if you're providing your own credentials! Also I wouldn't be happy about giving this kind of access to the whole virtual directory as I'm a newbie to SSRS so I'm not sure what security holes I'd be exposing.

However after some digging I discovered that if you just give anonymous access to "ReportServer/ReportBuilder" folder within IIS then bingo it will let you download - and when you come to login it will work ok.

And for the security conscious amongst us, in fact you can be more secure than that, only the following files require anonymous access for it to work:

ReportServer/ReportBuilder/ReportBuilder.application
ReportServer/ReportBuilder/ReportBuilder.exe
ReportServer/ReportBuilder/ReportBuilder.exe.manifest

SQL Server Reporting Services

ReportBuilder won't download on client computer