Software
by cnieboer
On the surface this is what I see, I haven't looked into it with great research.
Free Deployment with SQL Reporting Services vs. costly enterprise deployment with Crystal reports
Difficult but powerful developer environment with Resporting services. Crystal a little easier to use for the average report writer with little technical knowledge.
by sysadmin
by zoomzoom
Reporting from applications has always been difficult. We had used Crystal V8 and Active Reports before the release of SQL Reporting. We find SQL better for a few reasons.
The caveat I'll put around this is that we did the comparison at Crystal V8, we are a Microsoft.Net shop, and our backoffice is all Microsoft. We also did not have an experienced Crystal developer.
* Integration into Visual Studio IDE is seamless, so report development is easy and intuitive for developers
* We always had deployment problems with Crystal and ActiveReports, but SQL just seems to work
* The portal provides a heap of easy to find functionality (eg scheduling, subscriptions, snapshots) - I'm not saying that Crystal doesn't do this, but it all seemed easier with SQL
* SQL exposes a good set of services for integration of reports into applications.
Again, putting the above caveats around this, we've gone SQL.
Be a kind of interesting situation if you run Business Objects though...
Steve
by spanr
I have used Access and Crystal extensively (both great reporting tools in their own right, both with some frustrating shortcomings), and have reviewed Reporting Services.
Crystal, despite its shortcomings is designed to provide a tool for developing paper-based reports. More recently it has branched into providing the ability to publish these reports using the web.
Reporting Services, from my look, provides a great tool for developing web views of data, but lacks the ability to provide the "polished" finish I demand for paper, certainly with the "ease" (I use that word with some reserve) offered by Crystal.
The Crystal development environment is purpose built, while Reporting Services is a bolt on to the .Net development environment.
There are number of third party delivery systems if the Crystal offering is too rich - if anyone is interested try www.chelseatech.co.nz for one of the better systems.
In my opinion, and afterall that was what was requested, Reporting Services has potential but it has a way to go yet. Crystal has been around forever and is the result of a business focused on one thing.
Oh dear, do I sense another Mac vs PC discussion?
All the best to you all.
Regards
RowanS
by catadmin
I actually like Crystal better from a report development perspective. CR is intuitive and I learned it in 3 days. Of course, I didn't have to worry about learning the web publishing part of CR.
I don't like RS's pre-formatted report designs. I prefer to figure out where I want my columns and what subtotals I want (instead of using the prefab "Subtotal columns" choice that the wizard gives you). The Report Designer in SQL RS is very difficult to use without a help file. I would definately recommend getting a Reporting Services book from a local bookstore also. The help file is nearly inaccessible from a word search point of view and no where near as useful as the SQL Server Books Online.
That being said, RS has much more functionality than I've experienced with Crystal. It just seems much more robust. There are things, I'm convinced, that you can do in Crystal that you can't do in RS, but the reverse is true as well. And RS has that wonderful capability of nesting tables, matrices, and list boxes that is finally starting to prove its worth to me.
The question, I guess, ends up being "is the functionality and robustness of the program worth spending the weeks/months/years it'll take you to learn it"? If you'd rather stick with something that doesn't take a PHD to understand, then definately go with CR.
On the other hand, if you like a challenge, RS is definately that.
Hopefully, the menus, the help file and all other things that I currently "hate" about RS will be resolved in the release coming out with SQL Server 2k5.
BTW, someone else let me know about these resources for the differences between the two reporting tools. They are very interesting from a technical standpoint.
http://www.crystalreportsbook.com/SSRSandCR_ExecSummary.asp
http://www.kenhamady.com/ssrscomp.pdf
Catadmin
by pfarnell
by mcp111
Check out this link
by damon
Hey Mr Cranny,
We have both products and have this to say.
Crystal Reports -
Advantages - extremely powerful and amazing resources available (developers etc)
Disadvantages - Cost to implement, may be high on hardware resources
Reporting Services
Advantages - cost efective and easy to deploy
Disadvantages - lack of developer (at least in the short term) but has the backing of MS so will be a comparable product in 18-24 months
We have Crystal reports for our specif reporting requirements and those that we require a certain degree of interaction, Reporting services are used for standard finacial reports which are used frequently.
cheers
by daniel.hill
Another look at the 2 products, outside of just cost and ease of use is the infrastructure support.
With Reporting Services you get just Microsoft Server and SQL Database. Supported connectivity providers are OLE DB for SQL Server, Oracle, and Microsoft Jet 4.0 only. Microsoft doesn't even support their own OLE DB for ODBC.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;811241
Tried to create a report against a CRM app, and VS.NET IDE would crash everytime I went into the designer.
CR on the other hand can be installed on Windows, Unix, AIX, and Solaris. The database can be SQL, Oracle, DB2, Informix, Sybase.
In CR I've connected to SQL, Oracle, Jet (Exchange Global Address Book), ODBC, Sybase, and even the Event Viewer. No problems with any of the data sources.
by chuck_p
Have used Crystal for 12 years. Hope to never use it again. Easy to design reports, cumbersome for doing complex reports with formulas. Horrible to do simple things like changing a query or datasource at run time (especially with sub reports). Has different report object modules depending on the version you buy (very stupid). Horrible to widely deploy for Win apps (many many merge modules).
MS in sql05 just used for a few months seems ok. Not a band style report writer, so takes a little while to figure out. In sql2000, very weak in features.
Active Reports, best reporting product I've used. Trivial to learn, object model is very intuitive (just like you would expect in .Net) great licensing, easy to deploy.
by tech exec
This is a broad subject, as seen in many of the replies. In fact, the "free" version of MSSRS is not designed for the enterprise and it may cost as much to do an enterprise deployment as it would to put Crystal Reports Enterprise in place.
I've used both and can say that both have their strengths. If you have an experienced Crystal shop, don't abandon it for MSSRS just yet. Give MS some time and they'll release improvements, but they are not quite there yet. I expect that SQL 2K5 will introduce some nice improvements shortly.
Crystal Enterprise -- and especially the new XI edition -- is very mature and robust. There are most certainly some frustrating shortcomings in the design/develop/publish areas, but they can be overcome and it is a very nice set of tools.
I have not yet used ActiveReports, but based on some of the posts in this thread, I may download the trial and get a feel for it.
Best of luck to all.
Tech Exec
by daanvanbeek
by twilchek
This discussion is closed to new replies.
Sort by Trending