Microsoft® SQL Server 2012 Unleashed

Using Shared Data Sources

Unless you use shared data sources, the data source for your report is embedded into its RDL. This means that when you want to change that data source, you must modify the report or, at the very least, change its data source properties using Report Manager. If you don’t use shared data sources, each of your reports requires its own data source, and these data sources cannot be used by any other report.

It’s truly a best practice to use shared data sources. When the time comes to make a connection change, you have to look in only one place. Think of how useful (and timesaving) this will be when you need to test your reports in a development environment and then run them against production. When using SQL Reporting on ...