Reporting Services 64-bit Gotcha

I was developing a set of reports on a x64 machine running Win2K3 64 and SQL 64. The database that was used to get the data was Sybase. After a little bit of research, I decided that I would use the Sybase drivers that are provided by Sybase, rather than the OLEDB drivers. So I set up the drivers, create the reports and everything is fine. The preview works fine; I fine-tune the report and then deploy it.

Access the deployed reports and it give an error that the data source is not available. Come back to BIDS (Business Intelligence Development Studio) and try it, the report works. After a few times of redeploying the server etc, I went and checked the data source in the ODBC Manager and surprise!! No Data source definition.

Then it remembered, there is only a 32-bit version of BIDS (I had created the data source from inside BIDS). So I go and check in the 32-bit ODBC Manager and there is the data source. Sybase has two different client driver packs, one for the 32-bit and one for the 64-bit world. So I go ahead and install the 64-bit version, setup the ODBC connection and change the Datasource in the Reports server. The reports start working fine.

So, if you are developing and deploying on the same 64-bit machine, remember that the drivers used by BIDS and Reporting Services can be different.