Which perfoms better: Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services?

Question

Which perfoms better: Crystal Reports or SQL Server Reporting Services?

Answer 1

ssrs is good if your are using sql server

Answer 2

Overall, SSRS is an OK solution for internal reporting functionality. It's powerful for what it does, but IMHO it is not generalized enough for powerful analytics and reporting. Out of the box, it'll generate a table of data or a simple graph.

I've used SSRS 2000 and 2005 to build some rudimentary reports and use what was delivered with applications like MOM 2005. SSRS has great flexibility to build reports against parameterized SQL queries. You can extend the report generation with .NET CLR to do post-query processing, image generation, etc. The web interface is fairly user friendly and you can export generated reports in a variety of formats.

The web interface cannot be customized by very much. The parameter entry frame cannot be resized, so if you have a report with many parameters, SSRS will size it large, and the report output small and you can't change that in the browser. Speaking of many parameters, all parameters are statically declared. You cannot programmatically build parameters from the user interface. e.g. the MOM 2005 report for performance data gives you only 4 slots to specify performance metrics to report upon. You can't add more, rearrange, etc. You'll also find that you can't generate nested reports, such as a summary report with several graphs, tables, etc. like a web log report.

I haven't used Crystal Reports, so I cannot compare.

Answer 3

SSRS does a good job of making reporting quick and easy. Like most of Microsoft's tools that do this if you stay within what they have decided you should do it isn't a problem. If you try to go outside the box things become interesting and you'll wind up having to use some pretty odd workarounds to get things to work.

Crystal Reports on the otherhand is more difficult to learn but gives you greater flexability in what you can do.

We have alot of our reports where I work in Crystal Reports and have decided to convert them to SSRS. This is taking a while and we've found several things that don't work the way we'd like but SSRS has the distinct advantage of being free with SQL Server. Crystal costs alot so if you have to consider cost stick with SSRS and learn the quirks

Edit: As for performance we can't tell much of a difference in render times for the Crystal vs. SSRS reports.

Answer 4

Performance wise, I think MSRS performs better for pure reporting. If you need to create Reports or Forms you give to external customers, I would use CR. It has more features, and more control over the layout of your report.