Reporting Services Unable to connect to Remote Server in SQL Server 2005

Hi Friends,

I was installing & setting up SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services on my new laptop 🙂 – OS being Windows Server 2008 R2. After SSRS 2005 setup, I setup SSRS 2008. And now I am going to setup SSRS 2008 R2. But before I setup SSRS 2008 R2, I thought, let me check and verify the SSRS 2005 & SSRS 2008 installations even though the straight forward installations were successful.

So I began with SSRS 2005. As expected, I was able to connect to SSMS – no issues. Then, I tried to browse the Report Manager at http://localhost/Reports$sql2k5 – and boom – there you go the screen shot below:

The above error could pop up due to multiple issues – but the error describes connectivity issues – thanks to Microsoft, error descriptions make life really easy (yes pun intended). So, after some googling & binging – here is the actual problem & solution.

As you know, SSRS installation will create 2 virtual directory, one for the Report Manager and another for Report Web Services (Report Server). You need to make sure that Scripts & Executable permissions are granted for ISAPI.dll for Report Server Virtual Directory. Here is what you should do:

Start IIS -> Start -> Run -> inetmgr

Select Report Server as shown below:

On the right side, under IIS, select Handler Mappings. You will notice that ISAPI-dll is disabled as shown below:

You need to enable it. Select ISAPI-dll, on the right side click on Edit Feature Permission (see below)

Make sure all permissions are granted:

That’s it. It’s done.

Moral of the story: “When installations are straight forward, smooth and successful; there’s more concern that things might not run ;)”

Sorry friends, I am not done. As mentioned earlier, I also installed SSRS 2008 and faced another issue. See my next blog post on that.