SQL Server Reporting Services

[kaijanm]

Hello,

So, in my limited experience with Crystal Reports, I think it's horrible. I had SO many people tell me this, but I stupidly thought, "Oh, it can't be THAT bad." Boy, was I ever wrong.

Does anyone have any experience with SQL Server Reporting Services and ASP.Net and Integrated Security? Or just anything positive or negative to say about the product in general? I'm going to try to convince my boss to let me use an alternative to Crystal. It will certainly be well worth the money to have me wasting hours on stupid Crystal functions that don't do what they say they do.

Thanks!
Kimberly

 

[jmk418]

kimberly
i have been using reporting services for a couple months now and i find it to be quite useful i am just starting to integrate it into asp.net so im not sure how well that would work but overall i have been satisfied with reporting services

 

[MikeMCSD]

I have my Web Store built using ASP.NET, VB.NET, and SQL Server. Need to make nice Invoice forms for the orders.

I want to make an Order form that will display the order and customer information, and the shipping address.
But here is the hard part: I want the shipping address to be on a "peel-off" label that is part of the form . . so all you have to do is peel-off the label and stick it on the package . . . then put the order form in the box and you're done! This is like the way the old Amazon.com packing forms used to be like.
I would need to purchase special forms and have the report writer write to them.

I'm using Visual Studio 2002, so I don't know if I can use the SQL Server Reporting Services.

Is the Crystal Reports that comes with VS good? Do I need to install Crystal Reports 8 or 9 to use it?

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[kaijanm]

Honestly, I'm not the person to ask about this, but here's what I'll tell you. My experience with Crystal has been VERY frustrating. I have migrated over to SQL Server Reporting Services. The upgrade from VS.NET 2002 to 2003 is about $20, I thought, so it shouldn't be too big of an issue to upgrade and your projects will transfer nicely in my experience.

There is a version of Crystal Reports that comes with VS.Net, that from my understanding, should work alone without any other version of CR. Part of the problem I had with CD was the versioning thing though. Their documentation is not clear about which version it applies to, finding examples of what I needed to do was difficult (I think you need to do something very similar to me), if not impossible. Some of the options that appear to be there on the interfaced don't actually work! In this forum, I have usually had great luck with answers and that wasn't the case with my CR questions.

So far with SQL Reporting, I haven't had to ask any questions (that alone should say something!) and if you're already familiar with SQL Server, I think it should be fairly easy to figure out.

My advice, upgrade to VS.Net 2003 and use SQL Server Reporting Services.

My $.02.
Kimberly

 

[MikeMCSD]

thanks Kimberly!

"The upgrade from VS.NET 2002 to 2003 is about $20, I thought, . ."

I didn't even think to check for an upgrade to 2003.

Is the upgrade only $20.00? Is this an upgrade that is done at the Microsoft website or do I purchase a CD?

If I can get the upgrade, I'll definately go with
SQL Server Reporting Services!!
Thanks
Mike

 

[kaijanm]

Ok, so I spent about an hour yesterday afternoon trying to find a link for the upgrade and I couldn't find it. I know that when 2003 first came out, it was $20 or $30 to do the upgrade and it added a lot of cool (should have been in the earlier version) functionality. I was at a Microsoft event and they said it cost this much and then they sent it on the MSDN disks, so I just got it from there. (We're a state agency, so it's impossible to purchase things, even if they only cost $20!) I can't imagine them charging more that than for it now, expecially with 2005 about to come out.

Maybe you could call M$ about it? Just a thought.

Good luck!
Kimberly

 

[MikeMCSD]

thanks for the effort Kimberly . . .

seems the $29.00 offer expired, found this:
Visual Studio .NET 2003 Upgrade Offer....
($29*) for retail customers ended on September 30, 2003...

But I found a few Upgrades . . don't know how good they are . . on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=7109237219&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT

 

[kaijanm]

It seems like a good deal! The seller has 100% positive feedback and Enterprise Architect is the full version, so it seems like it will do the trick for you as long as you have one of the versions it can upgrade.

I'd go for it!

Kimberly

 

[checkai]

How can I begin to use Reporting Services? Is it better than Crystal, currently we use Crystal but I wouldn't mind moving to Reporting Services...I would like to build an asp.net app that handles the reporting off of reporting services...any thoughts on this?

dlc

 

[jfrost10]

Another option to reporting services is to go the XSL-FO route. XSL-FO is similar to HTML in that it describes the layout for documents, similar to how HTML describes layouts for web pages.

You do an XSL transformation with XML data and an XSL stylesheet that has XSL-FO inline. Once you have it, you can pass the transformed file to a renderer which will output to PDF for you (although this is where the cost comes in).

We're implementing the XML/XSL/XSL-FO technology as a replacement for Crystal. It's definately worth a look, and the experience you get with XML/XSL can help you far beyond just reporting.

Of course, time is an issue (learning the tech), but I think its worth it in the end.

hth

D'Arcy