Crystal vs Reporting Service 2

[DrHabi]

I know most people have probably tried out the Microsoft Reporting Service by now and was wondering what the vibe is out in the market. I still feel it is a little simple that is most likely best used as an in house reporting service. It seems to me that it is still not an easy thing to roll out as a reporting service for an application that has many custom reports. It does seem to be on the right path and could become the standard but I still feel Crystal is a much better product now. Just wondering if others out there have started to convert their reporting service from Crystal to the Reporting Service. We have been in the mist of intregrating it into our next version of our software but I still feel that we can totally leave Crystal behind as of yet.

 

[synapsevampire]

I think you mean that you cannot leave Crystal behind, right?

I've yet to be convinced that Reporting Services has the future of all developers and reporting processes in mind. Although it's clear that BO is bent on cross selling proprietary services, at least Crystal already had the processes in place to allow for simple development and distribution.

I agree that MS is a mere whisper away from stealing the market, unfortunately they seem ill managed as with so many of their products now, and are seemingly content to just act as an extension to SQL Server.

-k

 

[MJRBIM]

Once MS improves the ease-of-use and "pixel-perfect" delivery of paper reports, BOBJ is going to have a lot of issues for clients who use MS-SQL Server.

For now, MS Reporting Services seems more focused on the web-based presentation - and having "tech heads" develop the content.

I see BOBJ moving more and more of the Xcelcius functionality into Crystal Reports as a way to combat that challenge from MicroSoft.

 

[DrHabi]

I did mean that you cannot leave Crystal behind as of yet. I still have issues with the ease of creating reports in Crystal over Reporting Service and the use of variable in Crystal over Reporting service. I use variable extensively and it seems much easier in Crystal than Reporting services. Maybe I just haven't quite figured it out yet but I am not even sure if I can use them.