Querying Active Directory From SSRSTo Customize The User Experience And Secure Reports

IntroductionWes Springob(No relation to Mr. Squarepants)BI Consultant at New York Life Originally from Pittsburgh, now New Port RicheyWife Ashley, Portrait Photographer

http://SQLWes.com

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Disclosure: Extensive use of SSRS Proficient T-SQL Developer LDAP novice 0 AD administration experience Recently exploring reporting of data sources that aren’t SQL Server Have been wanting to work with AD Data in SSRS for years, but only recently have had

the opportunity. The names have been changed to protect the innocent = No live demo of

Active Directory

Use Case Why would you need to secure a report with AD? Doesn’t the Report Server do that for you?

Short answer, yes it does:

We can do more

System of recordMany database systems store a user’s Active Directory ID. But they also store a lot more, unfortunately, to “support” the application. Where in most cases, we should be going back to query AD to ensure we are using the most current values.

Tools A SQL Server with SSRS installedManagement StudioVisual Studio, BIDS or Report Builder to create RDL’sActive Directory Explorer

1. Aids in writing LDAP queries2. Free tool, downloadable from Technet3. Any domain account typically has sufficient, Read Only, rights

to query AD

ApproachesLinked Servers / T-SQLCLR / System.DirectoryServices NamespaceCustom Code in the RDL / System.DirectoryServices NamespaceQuery AD Directly as a Data source From within the RDL / T-SQL

What is LDAP?Lightweight Directory Access Protocol

“is an open, vendor-neutral, industry standard application protocol for accessing and maintaining distributed directory information services over an Internet Protocol (IP) network.” -- Wikipedia

Used to query or filter Active Directory from T-SQL or .Net code.Neither AD or LDAP are RDBMSAD is Optimized for fast reads

Active Directory ExplorerDefinitions:dn = Distinguished Namedc = domain componentou = organizational unitcn = common namesn = surname (last name)givenName = (First Name)

Linked Servers

OpenQuery

Creating the report

Creating the AD data source

Creating the dataset

Creating the Query Expression

Preview

Solving the Use Case

Queries?

Additional LDAP Queries

Resources:Active Directory Explorer Download:http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb963907.aspxThis Slide Deck:http://SQLWes.com