Delivery Extension

The delivery extension sample is one of the three samples supplied by Microsoft and is installed by default in the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\90\Samples\Reporting Services\Extension Samples\PrinterDelivery Sample .

Most of the delivery extensions require the Report Server Windows service to run under domain account credentials. Both email and printer delivery extensions, for example, require this condition to be satisfied. The first indicator that this condition is not satisfied is SSRS returning an error message: " The Report Server has encountered a configuration error. "

This error message is displayed in a Status column of Report Manager. More details of the error message are recorded to the SSRS log file (the default location is C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.3\Reporting Services\LogFiles ):

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 ReportingServicesService!library!4!11/01/2005-17:21:40:: e ERROR:  Throwing Microsoft.ReportingServices.Diagnostics.Utilities. ServerConfigurationErrorException: The report server has encountered  a configuration  error. See the report server log files for more information.,  AuthzInitializeContextFromSid: Win32 error: 1355;  Info: Microsoft.ReportingServices  .Diagnostics.Utilities.  ServerConfigurationErrorException: The report server has encountered  a configuration  error. See the report server log files for more information. 

Tip

Error messages containing AuthzInitializeContextFromSid usually refer to incorrect configurations in access security to domain-level resources. One of the most frequent causes of this error is when the SSRS service is not configured to run under a domain account.

A delivery extension spends part of its "life" responding to subscription-related requests from SSRS and part responding to delivery- related requests from SSRS.

In addition to the IExtension interface, a delivery extension should also implement the IDeliveryExtension interface; see Table 26.2.

Table 26.2. Members of the IDeliveryExtension Interface

Property or Method	Name	Description
P	ExtensionSettings	Provides list of settings to SSRS. The settings are used by both subscription and delivery mechanisms. Report Manager uses this setting and an implementation of ISubscriptionBaseUIUserControl to present a UI to enter settings. For example, in the case of email delivery, this is "To:", "Subject:", "Priority", and so on. In the case of file share delivery, it is "Path:", "Render Format:", credentials to access the file share, and so on. So the settings are available during delivery, SSRS stores settings in a Notification object and passes Notification as a parameter to the Deliver method.
P	IsPrivilegedUser	Indicates whether the user is allowed access to all the functionality of the extension. This property is required so SSRS can manage the extension. SSRS sets this property to false (default) if the user accessing the extension does not have the Manage All Subscriptions permission as a part of her role.
P	ReportServerInformation	Contains the names of rendering extensions supported by a SSRS instance.
M	Deliver	Delivers the report to a user based on the contents of the notification. The notification contains information retrieved through the ExtensionSettings property, such as an email address for the email delivery.
M	ValidateUserData	Determines whether a given set of delivery extension settings is valid. For example, this method can validate whether an email address provided as a setting is properly formatted.