When you have a SQL Reporting Services report developer who is developing reports on a different Microsoft SRS server than where you are deploying the reports it can be very common to get this error: “The report server cannot process the report. The data source connection information has been deleted. (rsInvalidDataSourceReference)”

A developer’s first instinct may be to open the report in Visual Studio and make sure the data source is set correct and even possibly deploy the data source and the report again through Visual Studio to the SRS server. Unfortunately, this often does not fix the issue.

There is; however, an easy fix to this. There is a GUID stored in the rdl file for the data source. Since the developer is working on a different install than the production server the GUIDs are different. There are ways to overcome this, such as create the production server and then use a backup of it to develop on, but I will not get into those details now.

You need to use the SRS web interface to resolve the GUID issue. Refer to the following screenshots.

1. Go to the Properties tab and you will quickly notice the problem in red.

2. Click on Browse and expand the tree under Data Sources and select the correct data source and click OK.

3. Now, a very important and easily forgotten step, click Apply.

That should be it. It has updated the report to point to the correct data source with the correct GUID. Click on the View tab to see your report.

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