Crystal Report or MS Reporting Services

[ezypezy80]

I'm currently looking for a reporting tool, and I would appreciate any opinions or suggestions on what to choose.


What tool would be best to purchase, in terms of
- price
- features
- easyness to learn
- support


considering that:
The company I work for is using SQL Server. We are in Finance industry.

I am coming from VB 6 background and sometimes also using Access queries to create reports.

Thanks guys, looking fwd for your replies

 

[vidru]

Have a look at this thread: thread149-879937. Some good links there.

As an aside, as you read through this stuff, any time someone talks smack about CR, it's likely because they either never used it, or they have a bit of a resistance-to-change issue.

-dave

 

[JohnEck]

I wrote the comparison piece on Ken Hammady's web site refenced in the thread mentioned above. Here is a little background. We used CR/CE for report development and distribution for over two years. I like CR and still use it occaisionally for a quick ad hoc report. If you are planning on distributing reports over an intranet I believe RS is what you are looking for. The biggest advantage you will have if you are a SQL Server shop is price. Ease of learning is about even if you have never used either product. RS has some subtle quirks which take a little getting used to. There are two things I believe give RS a distinct advantage. RS supports fully dynamic pick lists. CR/CE does not at all. Once a report is published the picklists are fixed and it needs to be refreshed and republished to get the new picklist. This causes all schedules and default info to disappear. I fought with this for the entire two years we used it and could not find a workable solution. IN RS your picklist can also cascade so if you select a region the state picklist will just list that regions states. The second was a big one for us. We produce some complicated compioled datsets for reports. The only way to do this is with store procedures. CR/CE had some very frustrating intermittent problems with SPs that I could never get fised. This caused report delivery problems that tarnished ou reputation with our managers. Converting to RS fixed that. Either solution will work for you and anyone that says one is perfect and the other is garbage is probably selling something.

 

[vidru]

Good comments, John. We're considering the move, but will likely wait until RS matures a bit. One of the big things that's keeping us from going ahead with it now, is the lack of a standalone report designer. Some of our clients use CR to create their own reports for use within our application. From what I've seen of RS, it's very developer friendly, but not so end-user friendly. They wouldn't be too keen on using the .Net IDE to design reports (heck, neither am I for that matter).

-dave

 

[ezypezy80]

Thank you guys for your responses.
I think I will play with both.

I have RS installed.
But I haven;t got Crystal.

I read from some websites that Crystal is integrated in Visual Studio.NET.
I have Vis Studio.Net already.
Do you mind telling me how to get Crystall added on to .NET?

Thank you.

 

[Eddie1979]

In VS6 you had to find the installation program for Crystal Reports (v4.6 in that I think) and run it. This was somewhere on the source CDs.

It might be the same in VS.NET. In VS6 Microsoft introduced the DRD (Data Report Designer) which they were 'encouraging' people to use. I heard somewhere this has been dropped and they went back to Crystal as the recommended report writer. Anyone know anything about this?

Sorry I can't be of more help - I'm still using VB6

 

[chelseatech]

The Crystal Report designer is included when you install VS.NET. Reinstall the software and check all the options.

It is CR.NET and is sort of midway between CR8.5 and CR9. There are a couple of things missing from the full version. For example as the VS.NET interface can't display guidelines, that feature is missing. So most of the good stuff is available.


Editor and Publisher of Crystal Clear

http://www.chelseatech.co.nz/pubs.htm

 

[chelseatech]

Now for some comments comparing RS and CR.

I see RS as a developer tool. The VS IDE is just too complicated for user based report design. So I see CR as superior in ease of use, and in power/complexity. The things you can do inside the formula editor with variables, User Function Libraries, are light years ahead of RS.

And as for the parameter pick list mentioned above. There are third party solutions out there that do this now (inlcuding my own cViewPICK utility), and CR11 due in January will do it as well.

In addition, Cr does some neat things with parameters like ranges, multiple values, no upper bounds. This is because the parameters are processed before the SQL is generated. With RS, the parameter are part of the SQL so multiple values and ranges will never be available.

If you are a developer working on an app it might be tempting to use RS for your reporting needs. But allocate some time to deal with all those user requests for new reports and report changes.

If you are a developer thinking your users will never want any new reports, think again.

If you are a user, CR is the better tool

Editor and Publisher of Crystal Clear

http://www.chelseatech.co.nz/pubs.htm

 

[synapsevampire]

Nicely stated, Chelseatech, however the advanced parameters functionality will be available to future RS versions as SPs will be able to accept arrays.

And you can handle dynamic pull downs using the front end, as many applications do. It's not a user report utility, but then neither is Crystal when doing advanced work, you have to understand basic programming principles.

I also think that there are advantages to RS that you didn't point out, such as cost, which is a HUGE difference.

I wouldn't rule Microsoft out, there are many defunct companies who did that. Generally once they put the crosshairs on you, sell out or find a niche to hide in.

-k

 

[JohnEck]

Chelseateach does have good points about mulitselect and range parameters but he forgets fully dynamic parameters available is RS. I used CR for 3 years and every year I pepper Crystal with requests for fully dynamic parameters and the response was always that they had other priorities but it was on the list. RS is far from perfect and there will always be advantage to using Crystal. I still use it for a quick and dirty one time request for info but if you want to develop and distribute reports over an intranet then I believe it is RS hands down.