Solution, Project, File Hierarchy

As with anything else developed with Visual Studio, it helps to understand some of the basics of how Visual Studio handles files.

If you are developing reports , the developer's basic unit of work will be the Report Definition Language (RDL) files and associated data sources. Developers can also include the shared data sources, which have an .rds extension. Likewise, if you are working with report models, the default file extension is .smdl (SMDL abbreviates the term Semantic Data Modeling Language).

The files will be contained in a type of project called a "Report Server Project." If you are creating a SMDL file for use in the client-side Report Builder, the project type is called Report Model Project . A model project will likely also have Data Source View (DSV) and Data Sources (DS). All SSRS- related files (RDL, SMDL, DSV, and DS) are plaintext XML files.

Each of these files gets included into a project. A project has folders to organize the different components . A solution contains many projects. Combined, solutions and projects create a management hierarchy. A solution has multiple projects; a project has multiple files. The solution is nothing more than a container for related projects that might or might not be of the same type.