SSRS migration and replacement

Finished, on a long fuse. On 19 June 2025 Microsoft announced that SQL Server 2025 would ship without Reporting Services. SSRS 2022 is the last release. It gets security updates and support until 11 January 2033, in line with SQL Server 2022, and it can keep its ReportServer database on a newer database engine, so nothing has to move by a deadline.

The earlier versions follow their SQL Server. SSRS 2016 went out of support on 14 July 2026, 2017 ends on 12 October 2027 and 2019 on 8 January 2030.

What replaces it is Power BI Report Server, which runs the same RDL reports and adds interactive Power BI reports. A SQL Server 2025 Standard or Enterprise key installs it; on older versions it needs Enterprise edition with Software Assurance. SQL Server 2025 Express, the edition a lot of small systems were built on, has no Reporting Services and no Report Server option.

Two different jobs, and most legacy systems have both.

Server reports are the .rdl files on a report server: the Report Manager page the office bookmarks, the subscription that emails the sales figures at seven each morning, the exports finance runs at month end. They live outside the application and can move on their own.

Embedded reports are the .rdlc files inside a WinForms or ASP.NET Web Forms application, rendered by Microsoft's ReportViewer control. They move when the application does, and that is where the difficulty is. The ReportViewer control was built for .NET Framework and was never ported to ASP.NET Core, so a modernised web application needs a different way to render them. The ports that exist are community-maintained, not Microsoft's.

1. Inventory. Every .rdl on the server and every .rdlc in the source, who runs it, how often, which subscriptions fire and where they deliver. The ReportServer database and its subscription tables tell most of it. Half the reports are usually dead. The ones that remain are the specification.
2. Extract what each report does. The dataset queries and stored procedures, the parameters, the expressions, the grouping and totals, the layout. Expressions are where the business rules hide.
3. Choose the reporting layer. Power BI Report Server where the reports are server reports and the licence covers it. Reports built into the modernised application where the application produces them for its users. A reporting product where the business needs ad-hoc analysis. Sometimes all three.
4. Move or rebuild each report and run it side by side with the SSRS version on the same data. Totals, row counts, and the layout the finance team recognises. A report doesn't switch until it matches.
5. Retire the old server when the last subscription has moved.

Each report is a small stage of its own, which is why the work can be priced as a fixed number and done in the order the business cares about.

Not by a deadline, and sometimes not at all. SSRS 2022 is supported for six more years, so a stable set of server reports on a supported SQL Server can stay where it is while the application in front of it is modernised.

The case for moving is one of three things. A SQL Server upgrade that takes the report server with it. An application modernisation that leaves the embedded reports with nothing to render them. Or the Express edition, which loses reporting with SQL Server 2025. The assessment establishes which applies and what is worth doing now.

Untouched. Reports read; they don't change anything. The moved or rebuilt reports run against the same database as the SSRS ones, side by side, until each matches. Where the new reporting layer needs views or a reporting database of its own, they are built and tested on a copy, then in staging alongside live, before anything connects to the live server.

The assessment is from £395 + VAT, sized on a free one-hour consultation, with an exact price before you commit. For SSRS it inventories the report server and the application's RDLC files, identifies which reports are alive, extracts what a sample of them do, and prices the move report by report as fixed numbers. What drives the price and the payment terms each have a page.

A report server on SQL Server 2016 or 2017, with the support date passed or passing. An application modernisation that reaches the reports last and finds they can't be rendered on the new platform. Subscriptions nobody remembers setting up, still emailing figures from a server that is about to go. And the rules that live only in report expressions being lost because nobody inventoried them.

Inventory first, then match every report before switching it. Marc Allington has built and replaced SSRS reporting on the .NET and SQL Server systems it usually sits behind, server reports and embedded RDLC alike, so the ReportServer database, the subscriptions and the ReportViewer's habits are familiar. Everything we build runs on open, widely used technology, in your own accounts, with full source code and ownership transferring to you on final payment.