Skip to main content

Crawl Microsoft SSRS

After you set up the Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) workflow, create and run a crawler workflow in Atlan to collect metadata about reports, datasets, data sources, models, entities, attributes, and their relationships. Atlan discovers folder hierarchies, report definitions, dataset queries, report models, and lineage connections to underlying data sources.

Prerequisites​

Before you crawl SSRS, make sure you have:

  • Completed setup with valid authentication
  • Report Server accessible: Network connectivity from Atlan to your Report Server
  • Permissions: Browser or Content Manager role in SSRS
  • Folders identified: Folder paths you want to catalog (or plan to crawl from root)

Create crawler workflow​

Create a new SSRS crawler workflow in Atlan to connect to your Report Server and extract metadata.

  1. In the top right of any screen in Atlan, navigate to New > New Workflow.
  2. From the Marketplace page, select Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services Assets and click Setup Workflow.

Configure authentication​

Provide your SSRS connection details and Windows credentials to establish the connection between Atlan and your Report Server.

  1. Provide connection details:

    • Windows Host: The hostname or IP address of the Windows server hosting the SSRS Report Server
    • Server Name: The server where SSRS is running (for example, ssrs.corp.example.com)
    • Server Version: Select your SSRS server version from the dropdown
    • Web Service Endpoint: The URL of the SSRS SOAP API (for example, http://servername/ReportServer/ReportService2010.asmx)
    • SOAP Schema: The full URL of the SSRS SOAP API namespace (for example, http://schemas.microsoft.com/sqlserver/reporting/2010/03/01/ReportServer)

  2. Enter the Windows credentials you created during setup:

    • Windows Domain: Your Windows domain name
    • Windows UserName: Your Windows username
    • Windows Password: Your Windows password

  3. Click Test Authentication to verify connectivity to SSRS.

  4. Click Next to proceed.

Configure connection​

Identify your connection and configure access control for managing this SSRS connection in Atlan.

  1. Provide a Connection Name that represents your source environment (for example, production, development, gold, or analytics).

  2. To change the users who can manage this connection, update the users or groups listed under Connection Admins.

  3. Click Next to proceed.

Configure extraction​

Specify which folders and assets to include in the crawl to control the scope of metadata extraction.

  1. For Top-level folder names, specify folders to crawl:

    • Leave blank to crawl all folders starting from / (default)
    • Enter specific folder paths separated by commas to limit scope (for example, /Sales Reports,/Financial)
    • Use wildcards (*) to include all subfolders (for example, /FolderName1*,/FolderName2*)

  2. Set crawl options as needed (for example, whether to include hidden items, report models, parameters, or data source metadata). Passwords aren't extracted.

Run crawler​

Execute the crawler to start extracting metadata from your SSRS Report Server.

  1. Review the crawl configuration.
  2. Click Run crawl to start metadata collection.
  3. Monitor progress in the Atlan UI and check logs for warnings or errors. An estimated completion time may appear based on scope. Crawl duration depends on the number of folders, reports, and datasets.
  4. To run crawls on a schedule, go to Schedule, set crawl frequency and time (for example, off-peak hours), and enable notifications to receive alerts when crawls fail, if available.

Review crawled assets​

After the crawl completes, verify the discovered assets and confirm lineage connections in Atlan.

  1. In Atlan, go to Assets and filter or search for the discovered SSRS assets.
  2. Filter by asset type and confirm the hierarchy matches your Report Server:
    • Folders: Organizational hierarchy
    • Reports: Published reports with parameters and lineage
    • Datasets: Shared and embedded datasets with SQL queries
    • Fields: Dataset columns with data types
    • Data sources: Connection definitions
    • Models: Report models for semantic layers
    • Entities: Business entities within report models
    • Attributes: Entity attributes from report models
    • Roles: Security roles for model access
  3. Verify lineage: reports to datasets, datasets to data sources, and fields to source columns. Lineage to upstream database columns requires the source databases to be cataloged in Atlan through database connectors (such as SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL). Fields then show lineage connections to columns from those separately discovered database assets.
  4. Check for any missing assets:
    • Review crawl logs for permission errors
    • Verify folder selection includes expected paths
    • Confirm hidden items setting if assets are missing

See also​