Crystal Reports .Net Guidance - crystal-reports

Question

We have been using .Net and Visual Studio for the last six years, and early on developed a number of web based reporting applications using the .Net version of Crystal Reports that was bundled with Visual Studio. I'm unimpressed with that product: It seems incredibly difficult and convoluted to use. We had to make security changes, install various extra software, and so on.
Now, we are moving to VS2008 and version 3.5 of the .Net framework, and the time has come to redevelop old applications. Our Crystal .Net developers are long gone and I face a decision: Do we stick with Crystal or move to something else? We have the "full" version of Crystal Reports XI at our disposal.
We produce PDF versions of data extracted from various databases. Some apps use the built-in Report Viewer but this seems redundant with the flexibility of grid views. We still need to produce printable PDFs in the grid or in a downloadable Excel format.
Is Crystal Reports .Net worth persisting with, or should we work out how to use version XI?
Alternatively is there a simple and low cost way to generate PDF reports without using Crystal?

Answer 1

I have experience with reporting in CrystalReports (trying lite version bundled with Visual Studio), ActiveReports from DataDynamics (4 years, full version), Reporting from Telerik (trying trial version) and XtraReports from DevExpress (last one year).
I think ( and not only me :) ), the CrystalReports are most uneficient tool ( developer productivity ) from this tools. The DataDynamics are much, much more better, bud is littlebit buggy :(. Last year we decided to change reporting suite - we have choosen a XtraReports ( with source code ), and I'm totaly happy. The price is little, no bugs ( to now :) ), wonderfull support, and ( the most important ) the productivity was grown a lot.
I recomend you DevExpress's or Telerik's reporting tools.

Answer 2

I would recommended i-net Clear Reports (used to be i-net Crystal-Clear). It can read your existing *.rpt files. Has a better and easier-to-use API (which I admit is not saying much...).

Answer 3

Like you, I've had poor experiences with Crystal Reports, and my gut instinct is to post "avoid it at all costs" in all caps with lots of exclamation points. However, I've had my afternoon nap today, so I'll post like a grownup.
If all you're looking to do is pdf-ize (yes, it's a real word, damnit!) then you might look into some of the PDF widgets like ABCPDF and the like. It's relatively easy to pop a well-formatted web page into a PDF document and be done with it.
However, if you need tight report formatting, consider sticking with crystal reports -- you have a big investment and knowledge base in the technology. Or, alternately, you could switch to ActiveReports or SQL Server reporting services.
I guess the cost/benefit analysis is the cost of retraining your dev team, and investing in the new technologies.

Answer 4

Move away from CR: just get a good PDF generator and Excel engine for .NET, and feed those using your own database code. You can use all the powerful .NET features, including LINQ, without having to wrestle with the Crystal Reports runtime and its woefully inadequate documentation and support.

Answer 5

I can suggest that the built in Microsoft reporting framework works adequately. You can do local reports or MS SQL server based reports. There is a client control that displays reports and can export to formats such as pdf and Excel. Visual Studio can handle report design for the stack.
As far as if it is better than Crystal Reports, I'd say check it out and see if you like it any better or worse. I've worked with the Microsoft Report Viewer more than Crystal Reports but both seem to be fairly similar. Offhand, Crystal Reports seems to be a more advanced reporting tool but more complicated.
I'm not sure about how to utilize the Microsoft Report Viewer infrastructure outside of Visual Studio. If you are using Visual Studio it should all be available in there and you can follow the online help instructions for deploying the pieces for your servers to your servers.

Answer 6

I have used ActiveReports from DataDynamics and Crystal Reports. Of these two, I would recommend ActiveReports above Crystal based on ease of use and, more importantly, future maintenance.

Answer 7

We use Crystal in our shop too. We are currently on 8.5, which is way old and is no longer supported by SAP. We tried to upgrade to CRXI recently, which involved an entirely new API. We had to shelf the effort due to other priorities. While working on the upgrade I found support for CRXI on a number of forums. Google it.
I believe you can find a cheap way to generate PDFs without using Crystal. I believe Adobe gives the creation part away for free. I would visit their site and look into it.
I would recommend staying with Crystal only if you had a lot of reports that were already using that technology.

Answer 8

Get out of Crystal Reports. They are poor.
Check out SQL Reporting Services. It works very well with .NET. Try it out. There is a learning curve, but when is there not?

Answer 9

IMO, you should consider other criteria as well such as:
Cost of the software
Integration with your .NET applications
API and Programmatic flexibility (All said and done, there are always the "customizations" and tailoring. For such scenarios , developers eventually fall back on programmatic solutions vs. out of box
Now, in my experience (having used both Crystal Reports and SSRS(2005/2008) , though Crystal Reports does come with a friendly set of API, it fails in many basic criteria and developers end fighting the software. This is I say based on my experience with SSRS where developers are far more comfortable with. For starters, it uses XML extensively and the provision to use custom code assemblies does not harm either.
--I think you would where I am getting at---
"Consider & Evaluate SSRS*. If you are hesitant at first, then do a Proof of Concept and test your requirements. I have a feeling you will be pleased with what you see
especially considering your requirement of using PDF format.
Developers, especially , MSFT specialists will thank you
Leverage the Programmatic rendering of the reports (though it sounds fancy , trust me , its not more than handling an API call
For e.g.:
public Byte[] Render
(
string Report,
string Format,
string HistoryID,
string DeviceInfo,
[Namespace].ParameterValue[] Parameters,
[Namespace].DataSourceCredentials[] Credentials,
string ShowHideToggle,
out string Encoding,
out string MimeType,
out [Namespace].ParameterValue[] ParametersUsed,
out [Namespace].Warning[] Warnings
out string[] StreamIds);
Member of [Namespace].ReportingService
)
--- where Format will be "PDF"
Hope you find this relevant