Reporting Services Architecture—Reporting Services Extensions

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Reporting Services Extensions

An extension is a .NET Assembly that is invoked by the Report Processor to perform certain processing functions. There are several types of extensions: Data Processing, Delivery, Rendering, Security (authentication and authorization), SemanticQuery, ModelGeneration, and EventProcessing.

For an extension to be used by a report server, it has to be installed (assuming default SSRS configuration) to the C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\bin directory and configured in C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\ReportServer\rsreportserver.config.

The last part of an extension filename usually implies the extension's functionality. For example, the HTML rendering extension's filename is Microsoft.ReportingServices.HtmlRendering.dll.

Custom extensions allow developers to add complementing functionality that is not available in SSRS "out-of-the-box." For example, a company can implement an extension that delivers reports to a phone or a fax.