What reporting platform do you prefer?

Question

Crystal Reports? SQL Server Reporting Services? A 3rd-party tool?

Answer 1

Crystal's a pain to use. If you are using SQL Server anyway, SQL Server Reports is pretty nice.

Answer 2

Crystal is good. Every software has it's quirks but Crystal generally is an industry standard.

You can:

• deliver reports in many ways (web, email, pdf, to html, etc),
• use their enterprise server edition to automate delivery and running of reports,
• they have superb developer tools compared to most other reporting engines,
• they are the built-in .Net reporting engine.
• Their ide isn't that bad and they have good scriptability. Adding barcodes is easy with something like idautomation's ufl library.
• their developer kit allows you to compile their report engine into your apps, be it web, or executeable for $8-900.

Sql Server reports are new and if they can deliver the most complex reports you'll ever need someday, today, then use it. I am sure in some time they'll have a lot more features than they do now, but CR seems to have the lead in the feature area.

Answer 3

I feel like SSRS 2008 gives you the most flexibility - every property, every field, every element is extensible through the expression language. You can write .net assemblies to call into from expressions and if you need more power they provide several interfaces for extending security, data processing and rendering.

Best of all it is 'free' when you have SQL Server.

Answer 4

My current contract customer is using Jasper Reports with good results

Answer 5

I've been using Reporting Services quite a bit and am finding it to be fairly easy to use, especially if you already use it in house and use the Microsoft development platforms. Recently I've been building reports that use OLEDB to connect to an AS400 server, and stream them from the Reports Web Service back to the appliaction to be rendered as a PDF or Excel file.

Reporting services also seems to be steadily improving with each new release. I'd like to think that this will only become easier to use with more advanced tools in the future. It also seems like it is capable of being integrated into just about every Microsoft product these days and fits the direction they are headed.

Answer 6

I use Crystal Reports 2008. Prior to that I used CR XI. Not sure why there's so much hate for it. Yes, merge modules are a PITA when attempting to serve them up on an intranet, but the functionality of CR2008 makes it a very good choice for reporting.

Answer 7

I've been using Reporting Services 2005.

I'd use 2008 (seems to be more flexible and powerful for things like charts), but my work hasn't upgraded yet.

The worst one I've had to use is MYOB clarity

Answer 8

I use i-net Crystal-Clear (compatible to Crystal Reports). It has the same features or more and it is:

• platform independent. If you want support another platform in the future this is not a problem.
• it is DBMS independent. The same report can be run on different DBMS without problems. You need only change a central connection configuration and not the report templates.
• it has a very good i18n support if you want reporting for different locales now or in the future.

That I think i-net Crystal-Clear is more flexible.

Answer 9

SQL Server Reporting Services also exposes 2 web services, which enables us to invoke and execute reports. For one of our projects; we use the web services to execute reports and export them as pdf in asp.net.

Answer 10

My preferred reporting tool is Excel, it may seem a bit odd to use Excel, but if you look from the users perspective this is the tool they prefer to work with. I’ve learned that that independently of the technology used to generate reports, invariably the data in those repots end up in Excel. So why not generate Excel spreadsheets directly, width rich functionality embedded.

Answer 11

XML+XSLT+XSL+Apache FOP

Answer 12

I have used SQL reporting services, Crystal reports, MS Access and a few other application specific reporting tools and SQL reporting is definitely my favourite. Does lean more towards developers than users but its power and flexibility is unsurpassed...oh yes and the cost (free) is a big plus as well.

Answer 13

I've used SSRS, Crystal Reports in VB6 and C#, and Business Objects.

SSRS is great if you are after something that is a good fit with your other Microsoft developments.

To be honest, every large reporting system has its problems when you get to the nitty gritty, and the hope is that MS will invest in it enough to overcome these. Since MS are making cutbacks, I'm not sure how likely this is.

I had a love/hate relationship with all the reporting technologies I've used, but so far my personal preference is SSRS, due to the ease of customisation with formulae, very good integration with SQL server and Visual studio, and the fact that I haven't worked with it as long as the others yet :-)

I particularly like the integrated Dundas charting controls available in SSRS 2008.

Answer 14

I have used both Business Objects (Crystal Reports) and SSRS (2005 and 2008). For maximum flexibility I probably would tend to favor SSRS. With SSRS you get the choice of running the reports locally (runs on application server/IIS) or on the server (Reporting Services).

With local reports, you can dynamically generate the Report Definition (RDL) if you want maximum flexibility. For server reports, most elements on the report can be expressions including the fields themselves which could be "indexed".

Answer 15

Used Reporting Services 2005 reason it is for free and integrated nice in Sharepoint

Answer 16

Crystal report is painful when u run it in another system

Answer 17

I'm using RAQ Report. RAQ Report is a free excel-like java reporting tool.

RAQ Report has such features:

1.Excel-like Interface, Easy to Learn

2.Import Excel, Precisely Export Excel

3.Original Data Input Method

4.Pure Html report, Only Need Browser

5.Unique Cross Tab and Any Type Report

6.Publish Reports to Excel/Word/PDF

7.Easily Integrate With J2EE Application

8.Supports Any Popular Data Source

9.Featured Preformatted Paper Printing

10.Totally Free for using and deployment

11.In Time Forum and Email Support

Answer 18

Check out VersaReports' Universal Report Server. We have an Enterprise-class report server that works with any report designer you want to use.

Answer 19

To the guy who said this:

Crystal is good. Every software has it's quirks but Crystal generally is an industry standard.

You can:

•deliver reports in many ways (web, email, pdf, to html, etc), •use their enterprise server edition to automate delivery and running of reports, •they have superb developer tools compared to most other reporting engines, •they are the built-in .Net reporting engine. •Their ide isn't that bad and they have good scriptability. Adding barcodes is easy with something like idautomation's ufl library. •their developer kit allows you to compile their report engine into your apps, be it web, or executeable for $8-900. Sql Server reports are new and if they can deliver the most complex reports you'll ever need someday, today, then use it. I am sure in some time they'll have a lot more features than they do now, but CR seems to have the lead in the feature area.

Yeah, if only SSRS did all of those things..pity. Are you kidding me? Everything you mentioned in your bullet list is in the box with SSRS.

and "SQL Server reports are new"??..if nearly 10 years is your definition of new..yeah, i guess. Granted you wrote your answer 1 year ago..but it was very wrong then. Would have been wrong 5 years ago too.

Answer 20

I think FastReport.Net is a great reporting tool. With it you can easly create profesional reports faster and develope your system. Here are some reasons I like it: -Connection to any database; -Adding dialogue forms to the report to ask some parameters before running a report; -Using built-in script; --Prepared report preview and view the result, print and export to many common document formats. Also, you can check here for more.

Answer 21

I use Windward Reports, and i think EVERYONE should.

1. You can design your reports in Microsoft Word and Excel (not even an excel-like interface; it's the real thing!) which makes it very easy to understand.
2. Their engine is extremely fast and doesn't take up much space. I am very thankful of this when I am on a deadline (you will be too!)
3. The more complicated "tags" can be a little hard to fully grasp, but if you go through some of the tutorials then you will get the hang of it.
4. It can handle almost any database, and can pull data from multiple databases in one report. (Access, Excel, SQL, XML, Oracle, OleDB, RDL, SQL Schema... the list goes on)
5. It has every output you would ever need, or at least that I would ever need. (PDF, Direct to Printer, XML, XLSX, DOCX, RTF, HTML... again, the list goes on)
6. The support team actually knows how to use the product. (and tries to help you with it!) I have been on far too many support calls where I know the product better than the "IT guy" at the company I'm calling. At Windward, the support team is also the development team, so they really do know what they are talking about.

Answer 22

Well it is not so much about what I would prefer and more about what my users do.

I do like Crystal but in my experience in many offices users are more familiar with Excel thus they use Crystal for only to retrieve the data from the database then export it to Excel to work with the data (making charts etc).

In terms of developing applications I think (as a .NET developer) Crystal is an obvious choice due to the Crystal support built into Visual Studio. It is easy to implement, user friendly and easy to deploy.

Answer 23

I use XtraReports from DevExpress