Report model data - sql-server-2008

Question

I'm working on ssrs 2008 r2 and from it, I'm building a report model using a relational database as a source.
I have many databases and all of them have the sames structure (same tables and same table fields).
from the first look on report model,all entities are generated from the data source view. Consequently, it doesn't allow for one report model to be used with multiple database.
Is there anyway to use the same report model for multiple databases ?
Ps: my report model has so many entities, for each one, I have to edit it.so you can see that what I need is to automate the process.

Answer 1

I was keen to see answers for this question since I have this same requirements for product I've inherited. But since you've not had any other answers perhaps this will help if I describe the setup we have.
Initial Deployment
Locally we have one Visual Studio 2008 (BIDS) Report Model project which contains one data source, and a number of data source views and reporting models. Each time a new database goes online, we change the connection string of the data source and update the deployment configuration of the project to target a different report server folder following the format /Models/<databaseName>. The model is then deployed using BIDS. The frequency of this is low, only happening once every couple of months. If we had to setup for lots database all at the same time this would be a slow and painful process. As a side note we limit access to each deployed model by configuring the security of each reporting folder i.e. the <databaseName> folder.
Model Updates
Since our initial deployment is manual, updating the model in the same way would be very painful. So I wrote a tool which makes use of the web services provided by SSRS to refresh our deployed models. At a high level this how this works; after changes are made to the report model found in BIDS project (remember we only have one project and not one for each deployed model) the tool loops for each database and calls the SetModelDefinition web service method passing in our updated model file. We're not changing the data source so the updated models on the report server will continue to use its configured data source. Again this only works because the data source name isn't changed per database.
For reference here's example C# code of what the tool does to bulk upload the model
// prepare the model for upload
string pathToSmdlFile = "c:\ReportModel.smdl";
string pathToDataSourceViewFile = "c:\ReportModel.dsv";
string semanticModel = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(pathToSmdlFile);
string dataSourceView = System.IO.File.ReadAllText(pathToDataSourceViewFile);
// combine the semanticModel and dataSourceView, BIDS does when you use the `deploy` action
// because we're doing this in code we have to combine
byte[] model = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(semanticModel.Replace("</SemanticModel>", dataSourceView + "\n</SemanticModel>"));
// upload model using web service
using (var rs = new ReportingService2005WS.ReportingService2005())
{
rs.Url = "http://yourserver/ReportServer/ReportService2005.asmx";
rs.Credentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("admin", "password");
foreach (string databaseName in GetDatabaseNames())
{
string fullpath = string.Format("/Models/{0}/ReportModel", databaseName);
rs.SetModelDefinition(fullpath, model);
}
}
I'm not saying this is the perfect setup - I actually think I should be possible to upload the reporting model once and have something change the data source at the point that the report is used. Perhaps its possible to configure the use of different data sources depending on the SSRS login used. Failing that the report itself should somehow pass the details of the correct data source to use (or connection string). On the flip side this does mean that our users don't have to know the details of the connection to the database. We just give them SSRS logins and allow them to build with report builder; because of the security applied to each database folder they are restricted to there database...