This post originated from an RSS feed registered with .NET Buzz by Peter van Ooijen. Original Post: Installing SQL reporting services on a machine without SQL server Feed Title: Peter's Gekko Feed URL: /error.htm?aspxerrorpath=/blogs/peter.van.ooijen/rss.aspx Feed Description: My weblog cotains tips tricks and opinions on ASP.NET, tablet PC's and tech in general. Latest .NET Buzz Posts Latest .NET Buzz Posts by Peter van Ooijen Latest Posts From Peter's Gekko

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.