SSRS Adhoc Reports using Data Source instead of Report Model

Question

I'm working on SSRS 2008. I'm trying to create Adhoc Report using Report Builder 3.0. To select Data Source, both *.rsds and *.smdl are listed. I selected a Data Source which points to a SQL database. When I add New datasets, I'm able to add the fields and it automatically detect relationships (Joins) using Primary Key and Foreign Key defined in the tables. I'm also able to edit the query. I ran the report and it ran successfully.

My question is I couldn't find any documentation regarding using Data Source for Adhoc Reporting. MS SQL documentation and forums insists that Report Model is required for Adhoc Reporting.

Please let me know if someone tried to create Adhoc Report using Data Source instead of Report Model. While I understand there are more benefits using Report Model (define entities/attributes, show/hide entity/attributes, organize entities/attributes etc.), I just want to know if this is possible.

Are there any known limitation using this method?

Answer 1

The limitation of using Report Models is specifically for Report Builder 1.0 (SSRS 2005). In Report Builder 2.0+ you are able to build your own datasets. In fact, in 2012, Report Models are deprecated. See Deprecated Features of SQL 2012

One of the features that 2008 R2 and 2012 have available are shared datasets, which allow you to create a dataset once and reuse it over multiple reports. So if someone without a lot of SQL knowledge needs to put a report together, you could have a suite of shared datasets for them to use.