- Installation Pathways and Preparation
- Step by Step: Installing Reporting Services on a Server with IIS
- Installing Reporting Services in a Non-Default Website
- After InstallationTuning and Reconfiguring
- Testing the Installation
- Installing Reporting Services on a Web Farm
- Removing Reporting Services
- Reporting Services Documentation Refresh
- Reporting Services Service Pack 1
- Summary
Removing Reporting Services
To uninstall or reconfigure Reporting Services, you can simply start the Setup wizard again using Windows Control Panel Add/Remove Programs. This launches a new dialog (as shown in Figure 2.15) that permits you to change the installed components or remove Reporting Services. Be aware that if you try to uninstall, the wizard doesn't do a complete tear down. It seems that after running the uninstall program you're going to have to get down on your hands and knees and pick a few splinters out of the system by hand.
Figure 2.15 Relaunching the Setup Wizard from Add/Remove Programs
Removing the Splinters Left Behind After Uninstall
Let's start with the databases created to support Reporting Services and host your reports. One of the problems is that the Reporting Services database can contain user data that you really want to keep. Just because the application is being uninstalled doesn't necessarily mean that you want to remove your user data too. In a web farm configuration, the uninstall routines can't tell if this is the last machine being uninstalled. Just imagine the chaos if, when uninstalling Microsoft Word, it also removed all your Word documents. In the same way, the uninstall program leaves the ReportServer and the ReportServerTempDB (or whatever you renamed them during installation) databases behind, so you (might) need to delete them by hand.
Deleting all of the things Reporting Services has installed and configured on your SQL Server can be problematic and tedious. This is especially true if you had any Scheduled Report jobs or Subscription jobs. That's because these jobs have entries for the SQL Server Agent squirreled away in the MSDB database. Here's a warning: don't go digging into MSDB to remove any Report Services SQL Server Agent jobs. It's much easier to make these changes using the Enterprise Manager by navigating to Management | SQL Server Agent | Jobs and deleting those dead jobs manually. You will, however, need to go digging into the Master and the MSDB databases to remove the RSExec roles that were created during the install, but you'll have to delete the members of the role first.
But wait, there is a bit more to tear down. If you launch the Component Services MMC snap-in from the Administrative Tools, and navigate down to Component Services | Computers | <My Computer> | COM+ Applications, you'll find at least a pair of IIS applications for ReportServer and Reports. We say at least a pair because if you've been installing and uninstalling you'll see a pair of applications for each time you installed! You can safely remove these from the system, although in order to do so you'll need to select each application's Properties dialog and uncheck Disable deletion on the Protection tab. This will permit you to delete them.