A feasibility study on
Reporting Services
with
SQL Server 2008 Express Edition
by
AK Sabin

Releases
There are three editions of SQL Express, each one adding to the functionality of the previous
one;
1. SQL Server 2008 Express
2. SQL Server 2008 Express with Tools
3. SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services
Out of these three, SQL Server 2008 Express with Advanced Services supports Reporting
Services
Feature Set
Listed are the feature comparison of three releases.
SQL Server 2008 SQL Server 2008 Express SQL Server 2008 Express with
Express with Tools Advanced Services
Management
PowerShell Integration Y (Separate Y Y
installation)*
Policy Based Management Y (manual only)** Y (manual only)* Y (manual only)**
Management Studio Basic N Y Y
SQL Engine
Integrated Full Text Search N N Y
Merge & Upsert Y Y Y
New Data type support
Filestream support Y Y Y
New Date & Time data types Y Y Y
Geodetic data types Y Y Y
Advanced Spatial Libraries Y Y Y
Support for Spatial Y Y Y
Standards

New Tools
Import/Export Wizard Y Y Y
Replication
Change Tracking Y Y Y
Synchronization Services Y (Separate Y (Separate Y
installation)*** installation)***
Reporting Services
Increase RS Memory Limit N N Y
RS Word/Rich Text Export N N Y
IIS Agnostic Report N N Y
Deployment
Enhanced Gauges & N N Y
Charting
Business Intelligence N N Y
Developer's Studio
* The SqlPS command line tool can be enabled in SQL Express by installing Windows
PowerShell 1.0 before installing SQL Express.
** Policies can be created in SQL Express and run manually. There is no support for automated
policy based management.
*** Synchronization Services support in SQL Express requires that you install the component
separately from the SQL Server 2008 Feature Pack.
Reporting
SQL Express 2008 includes integrated reporting services in the default installation. Plus the
Advanced Services download provides an Ad hoc Report Designer. There is no need to utilize
third-party tools and spend the effort required to integrate them in your application.
Feature Summary for Reporting Services
SQL Server Express provides the following Reporting Services functionality:

On-demand report processing for each user who views a report. When a user opens a
report, the report is initialized, the query is processed, data is merged into the report
layout, and the report is rendered into a presentation format.
Rendering formats are available for HTML, Acrobat, and Excel.
Report data sources must be SQL Server relational databases that run locally in SQL
Server Express.
Report server management and report viewing are supported through Report Manager.
Configuration is supported through the Reporting Services Configuration tool.
Rs.exe, rsconfig.exe, and rskeymgmt.exe command line utilities are available in SQL
Server Express.
Windows Authentication and predefined roles are used to map existing group and user
accounts to a named collection of operations.
Pre Requisites
Pre Requisites for SQL Server Express 2008 with Tools or SQL Server 2008 Express with
Advanced Services are
1. .Net Framework 3.5 SP1
2. Windows Installer 4.5 (What is this?)
3. Windows PowerShell 1.0 (What is this?)
.Net Framework 3.5 SP1 and Windows Installer 4.5 won’t be installed by the set up file. Because
they are trying to keep the size of the install packages for Express Edition as small as possible.
So, developer should get those set up files and install separately.
Limitations
The following major SQL Server 2008 components are not supported in SQL Server Express:
1. Integration Services (formerly Data Transformation Services)
2. Analysis Services
3. OLAP Services (Analysis Services)/Data Mining
Microsoft placed the following limits on SQL Express 2008:
1. CPUs: Only 1 CPU. If a system has more than 1 SQL Express 2008 will still run but limit
itself to 1 CPU.

2. RAM: 1 GB. More RAM can exist, but again SQL Express 2008 will only make use of a
maximum 1 GB.
3. Database Size: 4 GB. This limitation provides for the storage of a considerable amount of
data while protecting the domain of the higher-end SQL Server versions.
Unsupported Reporting Services Features
Scheduled report processing, caching, snapshots, subscriptions, and delivery are not
supported.
Analysis Services, Oracle, XML, SAP, SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS), OLE DB, and
ODBC data sources are not supported.
Remote data sources are not supported. Reports that are hosted in a SQL Server Express
report server must retrieve SQL Server relational data from a local SQL Server Express
Database Engine instance.
Ad hoc reporting through semantic models and Report Builder 1.0 is not supported.
TIFF (Image), XML, and CSV rendering extensions are not supported.
The Reporting Services API extensible platform for delivery, data processing, rendering,
and security is not supported.
Custom authentication extensions and custom role assignments are not supported. You
must map existing Windows domain user and group accounts to predefined role
definitions.
Custom report items are not supported.
Managing a long-running report process is not supported. Specifically, you cannot use
the Manage Jobs feature in Report Manager to stop report processing.
Scale-out deployment is not supported.
SharePoint integrated mode is not supported
OS based Installers
For SQL Server 2008 Express Core, there are 3 packages:
SQLEXPR32_x86_ENU.exe - This contains 32bit binaries only. If you are only installing on a 32bit
operating system, use this package.

SQLEXPR_x86_ENU.exe - This contains the same binaries as the 32bit only package plus some
x64 binaries so that you can install SQL Express in a WoW environment. Use this package if you
want to install SQL Server 2008 Express 32bit on a 64bit operating system.
SQLEXPR_x64_ENU.exe - x64 package for native x64 SQL Server Express on a 64bit operating
system.
SQL Express 2008 provides most of the security and manageability features available in the full
version of SQL Server
More
The following list details of some other SQL Express 2008 features:
XML Support: SQL Express 2008 includes an XML data type for storing raw XML data. In addition
XQuery is supported along with XML index and XML full-text search.
Replication: SQL Express 2008 include support for transactional and merge replication. This
support is limited to SQL Express 2008 acting as a subscriber only. It does not support acting as
a publisher.
Security: SQL Express 2008's security architecture is modular; it supports pluggable security
architectures like Active Directory. With SQL Express 2008 we can choose to build our own
security model using SQL Server security and/or we can integrate with an existing Active
Directory database.
Managed Code: If you target the Microsoft platform, the ability to integrate managed code into
your applications is a key benefit. SQL Express 2008 allows to extend SQL with custom managed
assemblies to create stored procedures, triggers, user defined types, and user-defined
functions.