Reporting services and errors in expressions

Question

I'm researching using Microsoft Reporting Services as a replacement for Crystal Reports. In production, most of the reports would be built by technical end-users, or by professional report designers (people who are technical, but not developers)

My question: I've created a report, and I have purposely put a syntax error in an expression to see what the user experience is (I'm using the report designer in VS2010).

When I build, I get a compile error. If I double-click the error, VS just takes me to the .RDLC file. It doesn't even take me to the line that has the error, and the message is very ambiguous. Am I missing something, or is this the design experience?

Answer 1

I have found it to be very annoying not being able to double click on the error and be taken to the error on the report. It seems like it is the design experience.

However the description of the of the error does tell you the name of the field in the report that has the error and little bit about the error.

Example, textbox1 is the field that had the error:

The Value expression for the textbox ‘textbox1’ contains an error: [BC30451] Name 'Fieldsbus' is not declared.

Have you looked at the Report Builder for SQL Server? It is a stand alone application that you can create reports with. It is meant to be used by Report Designers and other technical users. It is also meant to be used with a SQL Server Report Server. You can run reports without "compiling".

Does crystal reports have better error messages?