Using 2016 Reporting Services (SSRS) on a 2012 Server?

Question

I've been looking around on the MSDN pages - to simply see if the 2016 SSRS package was available to upgrade my current SSRS package in my 2012 Server.

It looks like the direction I got for installation was here:

Review requirements to determine whether your hardware and software can support SQL Server 2016 Reporting Services (SSRS). For more information, see Hardware and Software Requirements for Installing SQL Server 2016.

(This page: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms143747.aspx#bkmk_upgrade_checklist )

Now - I don't want to upgrade my 2012 Server TO the 2016 server preview - but I feel like I'm lead to believe that in order for me to use 2016 SSRS - I'm being forced to also update to the 2016 SSRS preview.

I'd like to know if I'm misinterpreting this or if I do indeed need 2016 server to run 2016 ssrs.

Any infos would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

You can install SSRS 2016 Service in its own instance (on a new box or as a named instance). The SSRS install will install SQL Server 2016 (but just for the ReportServer, and ReportServerTempDB databases).

Once SSRS 2016 is installed on the server, you can of course develop reports in visual studio against any version of SQL Server (what ever your datasource is set to)

Answer 2

You can't run SSRS 2016 on a 2012 SQL Server. The way to run SSRS 2016 is to upgrade the SQL Server that is running SSRS to 2016.