Best Report Designer for SQL Server

[jtrapat1]

Can anyone recommend the best report writer for Visual Basic with and SQL Server backend database?

By best, I guess I mean the quickest to learn, the one that designs the best looking reports, and the one that works well with SQL Server.
Also, I would be writing code, probably using ADO and not hard-coding any controls, if that helps.

I guess the top three tools would be Crystal Reports, Microsoft Data Reports and Active Reports.
Are there any others that would be useful?

Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance.

John

 

[Terpsfan]

I think Crystal Reports would be your best bet. There are a lot of wizards to make your job easier, you can build reports on the fly off of ad hoc sql statements you create within Crystal Reports, there is a wide array of report templates you can use and it presents the information very professionally. You might want to seriously consider using Microsoft OLAP (Online Analytical Processing) that comes with SQL Server. It allows you to build extremely sophisticated pivot tables based on many dimensions called cubes. They completely blow away Excel pivot tables. And you can view the results of these cubes within Visual Basic. If you are in a real hurry you can create reports in Visual Basic with the Data Report Designer.