Reporting Services Architecture—Security Extensions

Microsoft .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Visual C# (CSharp, C Sharp, C-Sharp) Developer Training, Visual Studio

Security Extensions

This book frequently uses the term "security extension" as if it refers to a single unit. In actuality, there are two interrelated extensions:

• Authentication extension, which handles a process that establishes user's identity

• Authorization extension, which handles a process that checks if an identity has access to a particular SSRS resource

SSRS includes a security extension based on Windows authentication. After a user's identity is established, an authorization process determines whether a Windows user (or a Windows group that contains a user) is configured to access a particular resource on a reporting server.

Developers can create additional custom security extensions. An instance of SSRS can use only one security extension. In other words, either the Windows or a custom extension can be used, but not both at the same time.