You manage the term store for a company's on-premises SharePoint farm. You plan to replicate the production environment term store to a development environment. When you attempt to export the term…

The SQL Server security administrator role governs SQL-level database administration, not SharePoint service application permissions, so it does not resolve the term store export permission error.

The error occurs because the farm administrator lacks FullControl on the Managed Metadata Service (MMS) application in SharePoint Central Administration. Granting FullControl at the service application level gives the account the necessary rights to read and export all term store data. Without this specific SharePoint service application permission, the export operation is blocked regardless of any SQL Server or other SharePoint roles held.

Using a SQL administrator account is an overly permissive workaround that bypasses the correct SharePoint permission boundary and does not address the root cause of missing service application rights.

The MMS service account is the identity that runs the service, not the account performing the export; adding it to the SQL Server bulkadmin role does not grant the exporting user the required SharePoint-level access.