We do use SSRS for other needs. However this falls outside the role of typical report requirements. Our db is OLTP and we have often millions of records in several tables, and SSRS reports can only provide so much. Especially when it comes to 2008's 65k row limitation, something we're battling with our existing reports already.

In this scenario, the customer would like relational tables (with lookups and enumerations flattened out) exposed to them so that they can use them in their OLAP installation, or develop custom reports as they desire. Our intent is not to host or configure OLAP on our servers. We want to provde customers with the data they need to implement OLAP at their discretion.

It does stink that we need a vpn running site-to-site to allow for replication publications, and that could get ugly if more customers want that kind of solution. Currently only a few customers have the IT resources to support an exchange like this, and only one has actually shown interest in getting data like this. I doubt it'll stay at one customer for long though, when they show other customers what they can do with the same data.