EDIT This is not strictly true – Read my follow up here for a fuller picture.
I was prompted to think about some issues on licensing recently for 2 reasons. Firstly I picked up a posting via Technorati that I hoped would answer some questions (it didn’t) and also because I ran into this issue on the project I am on.
The suggested architecture for running SQL Server and reporting services is to have the database on one machine and the Reporting Services on a second machine with IIS installed. very sensible until you find that this means 2 licences for SQL Server. Unfortunately the client had ordered an RS / IIS box but did not have the budget for the second licence and had to send it back.
It would seem to me that a licence based on the location of the Reporting Services DB would be a far better system but probably not such a good revenue earner. I am just irritated that I had to break the news to the client!
Fortunately the licence for the tools are more practical. From the SQL Server 2005 Licence Doc
a. Running Instances of the Additional Software. You may run or otherwise use any number of instances of additional software listed below on any number of devices. You may use additional software only with the server software directly, or indirectly through other additional software.
I would give a link but as it is a google find to a word doc the url is pooched. A search for “Microsoft sql server 2005 BIDS licence” brings it up as the second link.
[...] A PingBack reference to our earlier entry on the Reporting Services license says we were not a help here to that person, so I wanted to clarify this further. The SQL Server 2005 Licensing White Paper covers the situation of running the BI components on other servers – if you want to run the server components, including Reporting Services, on another box, you must have another SQL license. This is on page 4: [...]
By: Visual Studio 2005/SQL Server 2005 Community Launch Event : More on SQL 2005 Reporting Services Licensing on Friday 27 January, 2006
at 3:58 am
[...] Reporting Services Licences – An Update Wow this conversation stuff can work! Last night I posted that MSRS can only be installed on a machine that has a SQL Server licence. This meant that the preferred architecture of the database on one machine and Reporting Services and IIS on another required 2 licences. I woke up this morning and found that I had a reply. What I had said was not totally accurate. The full reply is here. A Link to the licence document download is here . What it says is that if you want the Report Server on a different machine then that will require a separate licence but you can have the Report Manager on a different machine without a separate licence. Now the Report Manager is the web UI for the reports and the Report Server is the engine for delivering the reports. I am not sure which half does most of the work and I am sure that you would still need IIS running on the Report Server machine as it delivers its reports using SOAP calls but this could be a useful half way house especially when it comes to integrating the delivery of reports from the same machine that is delivering other content such as MS CRM or Great Plains Portal. I have edited the original post to point here for the fuller picture. My extreme thanks to BazarewskyM for such a prompt and full answer. [...]
By: Charlie Maitland’s Blog » Blog Archive » Reporting Services Licences - An Update on Friday 27 January, 2006
at 9:14 am
[...] More on SQL 2005 Reporting Services Licensing A PingBack reference to our earlier entry on the Reporting Services license says we were not a help here to that person, so I wanted to clarify this further. The SQL Server 2005 Licensing White Paper covers the situation of running the BI components on other servers – if you want to run the server components, including Reporting Services, on another box, you must have another SQL license. This is on page 4: The Business Intelligence components for SQL Server 2005 include Analysis Services, Reporting Services, and Integration Services. To use any of these components, the server on which Business Intelligence is installed must have a valid SQL Server 2005 license. If these components are in a separate server than the main database server, then they require an additional license of each additional server where they are installed. The EULA (section 2c) does state that you can run the client tools and some other pieces on unlimited boxes, but it lists the portions explicitly: c. Running Instances of the Additional Software. You may run or otherwise use any number of instances of additional software listed below on any number of devices. You may use additional software only with the server software directly, or indirectly through other additional software. Analysis Services Shared Tools Business Intelligence Development Studio SQL Server 2005 Books Online Connectivity Components Legacy Components Management Tools Notification Services Client Components Reporting Services Report Manager Reporting Services Shared Tools SQL Server 2005 Shared Tools Software Development Kit SQLXML Client Features SQL Server Mobile Server Tools So if you want the front-end Report Manager to be on another IIS box, that’s fine, but for actually running Reporting Services, you need to have a SQL 2005 license. One very important point here – the base installer does not support installing the Report Manager by itself. This means you have two options: You can follow the instructions that the MSDN article “Configuring a Report Server for Internet Access” gives. These instructions lead to two full RS installations, which takes us to two licenses. This is mentioned in the article. You can do the copy by hand from the full RS installation to the web server for just the Report Manager; this is discussed in Microsoft newsgroup postings such as Separate Report Manager from Report Server. However, the ability to run the management tool without Report Server probably is fairly useless for production environments. Generally, you want to actually run the reports, which means Reporting Services, which means the second license. For the record, none of this is different than SQL Server 2000. Published Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:10 PM by BazarewskyM Filed Under: VS-SQL 2005 Launch Event (Jan 2006) [...]
By: Visual Studio 2005/SQL Server 2005 Community Launch Event : More on SQL 2005 Reporting Services Licensing on Tuesday 22 August, 2006
at 2:56 pm