Nope, this is just bizarre. The only time I hear of that is if people are
hosting an application, so the data for the application is in a variety of
databases.

The only issue I can see is if he needs to create a datamart because he is
pulling data from multiple servers and as such cannot do cross server joins
of tables. However, if he is reporting off the data then this is not
necessary. I report off of data from four different places: Sybase, two SQL
Server servers, and In-SQL (a real time database). One of my SQL Servers is
a datamart that I pull data into for reporting. The data there comes from
three different servers. Some data is synchronized every 5 minutes, other
data nightly.

Anyway, if he is creating a datamart I sure would hope he would have
involvement from a DBA.

A few DBA type info for you. I have found the best way to access the data
for reporting is to run in mixed mode and have a readonly user that is used
for reporting. This is a lot easier than using integrated security. Plus it
allows connection pooling to kick in for better performance and less load on
the servers.

One thing he will want to do is create stored procedures. There are many
times that is the best way to solve a problem. I name all my procedures
pr_rpt_whatever, this groups all stored procedures for reports together.

Reporting services requires two databases, one for the core product and one
of the portal. Those are the only two databases required.


--
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services


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I am coming at this from a DBA perspective. Our report writer has taken to
creating database as an intermediate step in report writing for large
reports. So he has proposed adding 20 or so new databases onto our SQL
servers to hold tables from which to report from. Is this the standard way of
writing reports in SQL reporting (it doesn`t seem right to me) as obviously
it creates a large overhead in databases, backups, maintenance etc. How would
the creation of databases to run reports be justified ?

Thanks

Thanks Bruce.

Very comprehensive answer. Thats exactly how I saw the situation to be
honest. I have already created two datamarts (from two seperate areas) that
are used for centralised reporting across systems. I also see no need to
create additional databases from which to process data.

Think I need to get a handle on exactly what he is trying to do here.

Thanks

Si


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