Can Reports Server be accessed through the a URL?

im currently accessing SQL Server Reporting Services for an upcoming project. so far its all good & does everything i want it to. except i have a couple of questions which i cant seem to find a definite answer for

1. Can the reports server be accessed from a public website? i realise there would be security issues with logon's etc but can it be done? should it be done? basically an authenticated user sitting at home could hit the reports server by coming in over the internet - without the need for VPN or similar

2. When you publish a report could a URL be emailed to a user to allow them to view the report? again this would be a public URL

the project we are working on has an ad-hoc reporting side to it. the problem occurs in that the website & db will be hosted by a hosting company - and i was wondering is it possible to make the Reporting services pubically available just like "any other website" with a www.mysite.com address?

Any help is greatly appreciated, or pointers in the right direction.

Cheers,
Craig

The short answer to both your questions is yes it can be done.

Obviously you need to consider whether you would want to expose your reports to the whole world. Also with authentication, if you are not using NT accounts then you will need to revert to using Forms Authentication. Using SSL is also recommended. Other things you may need to look at is building a custom security extension to authenticate users accessing your report server against some custom user database. Check books online for instructions on how to set it all up.

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Nice one, cheers for the info

Craig

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just a bit of a carry on from Q1

Would you be able to access the Report Builder in order to create ad-hoc reports via a public URL?

from what i can see it appears not?

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This should be possible. I remember having a bit of trouble setting this up once but I wasn't using any security extensions at the time. With the right code in place this should work just fine.

My understanding is that Anonnymous access needs to be granted to /ReportServer/ReportBuilder (it will be anyway for a public URL) and the ReportBuilder will just talk to the ReportService to request access to resources such as report models. So as long as the user can be authenticated and the AuthorisationExtension in place on the server side this should be doable.

One thing to keep in mind is that Report Builder will prompt for a login however if you type domain\username and password into the boxes it doesn't actually pass on the domain just the username and password parts. So if you're in a multi dimain environment there could be a problem.