Major differences between Crystal Reports X and XI

Question

After inheriting a project, I have two sets of apps:

• a set of Winforms apps, running on .NET 2.0, which use Crystal Reports X
• a set of Webforms apps, running on ASP.NET 2.0/3.5, which use Crystal Reports XI

Both projects are being developed using Visual Studio 2008, and both Crystal Reports versions are full developer versions - not the versions included in Visual Studio itself.

I'm a bit stumped and wondering if anyone could enlighten me about the major differences between those two versions.

Does anyone (fore)see any major hassle trying to upgrade the Winforms apps to Crystal Reports XI so that I could consolidate on a single version? Any known traps and pitfalls?

Answer 1

I've experienced one pitfall - if you're talking about the standalone version of Crystal XI (and not the .NET version, which is really CR10.2), then this doesn't integrate too well with Visual Studio 2005. If possible, you should download Release 2 of Crystal Reports 11 (which is a free download for licensed CRXI users), which fixes most of the issues.

Additionally, this tool is useful for managing multiple versions of Crystal within Visual Studio, as it will enable you to use CRXI (Release 2) with both VS2003 and VS2005. Right now, if I'm reading it right (that you have Crystal 11 standalone as well as Crystal Reports for VS 2005), you'll have a few problems getting both apps to use the same version. The Integration Manager and CR11R2 will fix those.

After that, it's mostly an issue of updating references. The CR object model hasn't changed too much between the versions of .NET so the code shouldn't need any significant modifications. I've updated two WinForms apps from Crystal Reports for VS .NET 2003 to CR11R2 without having to change a line of code. One thing, though - I've not done much with Crystal Reports in ASP.NET so I can't say it'll be as straightforward.