Hello, I've been in contact with the BoldReports people, about using their control with SSRS + Remote mode.
Here's my feedback to them, in case you find it useful - note that the answer to question 1 was "yes" more or less - they have full interface to cater for data sources:
There are some problems with the current code, which I’ve listed below:
1) We cannot expect a customer to enter credentials for the live SQL server. If this was added just so we could test the new version of your reports viewer, then that’s not so bad. In this case, I would expect to supply a table of: “data source name + username + password” within the software, so that the Bold Reports viewer could select which credentials it needs, when it requires them. Would that be a possibility?
2) Even if the above is possible, some extra work is required to create a table of data source to credentials mappings inside a config file, for example.
3) The viewer downloads the .rdl file for local processing, so the data sources need to be retrieved from the web server making the call, rather than the remote report server. This means that the web server needs direct access to the report servers’ data sources, which might not always be possible.
4) Screenshot 2 shows the result of the “Weekly hours” report. This report contains embedded charts for each row, but the report had issues rendering these. Screenshot 3 shows how this should look.
Regarding the above issues, the could potentially be resolved by using the 2005 Report Execution Service (ReportExecution2005.asmx) – and returning a report as HTML5 (available in the list of outputs for SSRS 2017). I’m not sure what a report looks like if it has drill downs or sub reports, but it might be an easier approach. This service only requires report parameters and doesn’t need to be given data source details – it returns the whole report complete with data. We can supply an example of how this is done in Powershell if needed. Potentially, the Bold Reports viewer could display the viewer, buttons and interactive parameters part and let the report execution service to retrieve the report in HTML5 format. The resulting HTML5 based report might need to be extracted from the <body> html tags and any styles may need to be extracted and placed in the <head> of the page containing the Bold Reports viewer. I think this option would add more value to your product, especially considering the recent release of .Net 5 and the pressure for companies to find another solution.