SSRS vs Crystal Reports for Standalone Windows Application

Question

Many developers prefer SSRS over Crystal Reports. Is SSRS also better for a standalone Windows app that connects to a local SQL Server Express Edition (deployed as a downloadable app distributed over the Web)?

Answer 1

I am not an expert at Microsoft Reporting, but one issue I have with Crystal Reports is the deployment. Crystal Reports requires a viewer installed on the local machine to view the reports. I used to use ClickOnce to deploy my app and include the Crystal Reports install as a prereq. This works, but the Crystal Reports viewer is kind of fat and of course would be better if it weren't necessary.

Since I've moved the project to VS2008, instead of using the ClickOnce depolyment directly to my deployment server, I deploy to my local machine and copy over only the necessary files.

I think with SSRS you only need to copy over the necessary assemblies with your project for the viewer to work so you don't have to install the viewer separately.

Hope this helps.