Migrating Crystal Reports and many features not available

[Luvsql]

I have over 50+ crystal reports to migrate into SRS. I'm trying my very first one (invoice) and am stumped right off the bat as Crystal allows for Report Headers/Footers plus Page Headers/Footers, plus you can add many subsections to each, then conditionally format/suppress based on data values.

As well, I use boxes in crystal that crosses from the report header or page header down to the group headers/footers so that the box is uniform and auto-fits to the data that is printed as one box, but this also doesn't seem to be possible?

These are pretty basic report design that are missing from SRS 2005. Are there any workable workarounds for this?

 

[RiverGuy]

DaveInIowa recently answered the Report Header question. See here: thread1462-1567081

The bottom line is that you don't really need it because you can place textboxes and other objects directly onto the body of the report.

You can conditionally hide items in SSRS. Each item will have a property called "Hidden." You can use expressions to conditionally set the property. For example, let's say you have one table for Purchases and one table for Sales. You then have a parameter with possible values of Purchases or Sales. Your Hidden properties for the Purchases and Sales tables would look something like this:

=Parameters!ReportType.Value <> "Purchases"

=Parameters!ReportType.Value <> "Sales"

 

[checkai]

I did this migration over a year ago...more like 200 reports...

Be prepared to let go of the nice formatting and the drilling through of a report. In my case, we made some improvements to the way we provided reporting and the end users accepted the changes very well.

Good luck! And start with a few easy reports to get your feet wet.

 

[Luvsql]

K, I've done the text boxes and managed to conditionally suppress based on page numbers, but in Crystal, I have a text box that prints data from a formula I created from a table that is not the main table. Ie in SRS, I've had to create a dataset that calls my sp that has all my invoice details. I then created a dataset that pulls the location addresses, but there is no where to link the Location field from the stored procedure dataset to the Locations address dataset (equivalent in crystal to linking the sp to the table with either an inner or left join)?

If I need to add a formula to the header to pull that location's address and the parameters on the sp pull the detail, how does SRS know to print the address for the location that is joined between the two?

When I pull a field from my Location dataset into the page header, it says it can't use fields in the headers? WHAT? I then made it an expression, but still won't work.

If I had a very basic report that all the examples and manuals use, then maybe SRS, but wow. This is BASIC report design.

 

[RiverGuy]

Here's the thing--SSRS was never intended to be a clone of Crystal Reports. So it would be unwise to try to convert a Crystal Report to SSRS line-by-line or function-by-function. Try to convert the overall functionality of the report instead. I'm sure you'll find many things which Crystal can do that SSRS cannot do, and vice-versa.