Question

What’s the best way to setup SSRS reports to run against a test database? We need to run them from the Report Server (e.g. from a browser) against a test database. I tried creating a linked report but I don’t see a way to associate a different data connection with the linked report.

Thanks.

Answer 1

I usually create a second copy of reports in a Test folder on the SSRS server. This lets consumers test report changes before they affect production.

But if you really want one version of the report to point at both production and test you can get clever with data sources. Here’s a blog entry discussing dynamically changing your datasource based on a parameter.
http://skamie.wordpress.com/2010/12/17/ssrs-changing-data-source-dynamically/

Then you’ll need to either expose the parameter or call the report in some way where you can set the hidden parameter.