Migrating From CR 9 to VS Reporting Services

Hi,
I'm not that familiar with VS RS and I have to convert reports from Crystal
Report 9 to VS RS.
Is it possible ? If not, is there any equivalent of the "unbound fields"
from CR9 in VS RS ?
Thanks in Advance.
wadjaHello Wadja,
I apologize for contacting you on an unsolicited basis, but I read a
few of your postings on Google's Crystal Developers users group and
hoped that you'd be willing to help me.
I'm a journalist with Application Development Trends magazine (ADT,
http://www.adtmag.com), and I'm working on a story on reporting tools
from a developer's perspective. As you no doubt know, Crystal has
long been pretty much the only game in town in this respect, as the
former Crystal Decisions seeded the market with this tool (it's shipped
with Visual Studio for more than a decade, for example, and it ships
with a host of other applications and tools, too).
Now, however, developers have a choice of which reporting tool to use
when they need to incorporate reporting functionality into their apps.
Microsoft announced its SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services last year,
and there's even an open source alternative called BIRT (that's short
for BI Reporting Tool). I'd like to take a look at the positives and
negatives of each of these solutions -- Crystal still seems hard to
beat for straight-up reporting, but both Reporting Services and BIRT
promise better (that is, cheaper) report lifecycle management
capabilities, which could make them better choices for many BI-related
reporting applications.
Would you mind having a go at a few of the questions I've appended
below? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue. If your employer
prohibits you from speaking on the record to journalists, I don't
have a mind abstracting its identity (e.g., "a major pharmaceutical
company based in the Northeast," or "a large financial services
firm based in the American South"). So don't let that stop you.
Thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it, and I apologize, once
again, for contacting you on an unsolicited basis.
Best,
Steve
1. Is your organization invested in Crystal, or have you transitioned
over to Reporting Services? If the former, for what purposes or in
support of which applications do you use Crystal? (I'm trying to get
a sense for whether you use Crystal mostly as a default reporting tool
for app dev purposes, whether it's tied to the use of any specific
application, or whether you're using it mostly as a reporting
front-end for data warehousing and BI.)
2. Did your organization opt for Crystal as a matter of choice -
e.g., you evaluated CR in addition to a host of other tools - or did
it go with Crystal largely because it was bundled with your default
development environment, or core applications that you use?
3. In comparison with Reporting Services and other reporting solutions,
what features about Crystal do you most like? What features about it
would you most like to change? How well do you feel Crystal
addresses/addressed your core use requirements?
4. Re: Reporting Services, are you currently using it? If not, have you
looked into using it? What features, if any, do you most like? What
features, if any, are deal-breakers for you? How do you feel that
Reporting Services compares with Crystal and other established
reporting solutions?
5. Do you have any interest in an open source reporting tool based on
the Eclipse development framework? If so, have you looked at the BIRT
project?|||Hello Steve,
As I said before, I'm new with reporting tools and with my company.
Therefore I can hardly make objective answers to you.
All I can tell is that they (developers before I step in) used Crystal
Report (CR) to test it. Now, we currently use Reporting Services(RS). The
reasons that made us change :
- We don't have to invoice our clients for using CR, it is included in
Microsoft Licences (we have a partnership with this company).
- Several developers complained about the technical support given with CR.
They hardly find professional help they needed.
- I was said designing on RS was much more easier than on CR.
For the moment, we are not interested in other report tools, as RS meets our
satisfaction.
I hope I gave any relevant information for you.
Best,
wadja
"daedalus" <stephen.swoyer@.gmail.com> a écrit dans le message de news:
1117634907.794866.228080@.f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com...
> Hello Wadja,
> I apologize for contacting you on an unsolicited basis, but I read a
> few of your postings on Google's Crystal Developers users group and
> hoped that you'd be willing to help me.
> I'm a journalist with Application Development Trends magazine (ADT,
> http://www.adtmag.com), and I'm working on a story on reporting tools
> from a developer's perspective. As you no doubt know, Crystal has
> long been pretty much the only game in town in this respect, as the
> former Crystal Decisions seeded the market with this tool (it's shipped
> with Visual Studio for more than a decade, for example, and it ships
> with a host of other applications and tools, too).
> Now, however, developers have a choice of which reporting tool to use
> when they need to incorporate reporting functionality into their apps.
> Microsoft announced its SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services last year,
> and there's even an open source alternative called BIRT (that's short
> for BI Reporting Tool). I'd like to take a look at the positives and
> negatives of each of these solutions -- Crystal still seems hard to
> beat for straight-up reporting, but both Reporting Services and BIRT
> promise better (that is, cheaper) report lifecycle management
> capabilities, which could make them better choices for many BI-related
> reporting applications.
> Would you mind having a go at a few of the questions I've appended
> below? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this issue. If your employer
> prohibits you from speaking on the record to journalists, I don't
> have a mind abstracting its identity (e.g., "a major pharmaceutical
> company based in the Northeast," or "a large financial services
> firm based in the American South"). So don't let that stop you.
> Thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it, and I apologize, once
> again, for contacting you on an unsolicited basis.
> Best,
> Steve
> 1. Is your organization invested in Crystal, or have you transitioned
> over to Reporting Services? If the former, for what purposes or in
> support of which applications do you use Crystal? (I'm trying to get
> a sense for whether you use Crystal mostly as a default reporting tool
> for app dev purposes, whether it's tied to the use of any specific
> application, or whether you're using it mostly as a reporting
> front-end for data warehousing and BI.)
> 2. Did your organization opt for Crystal as a matter of choice -
> e.g., you evaluated CR in addition to a host of other tools - or did
> it go with Crystal largely because it was bundled with your default
> development environment, or core applications that you use?
> 3. In comparison with Reporting Services and other reporting solutions,
> what features about Crystal do you most like? What features about it
> would you most like to change? How well do you feel Crystal
> addresses/addressed your core use requirements?
> 4. Re: Reporting Services, are you currently using it? If not, have you
> looked into using it? What features, if any, do you most like? What
> features, if any, are deal-breakers for you? How do you feel that
> Reporting Services compares with Crystal and other established
> reporting solutions?
> 5. Do you have any interest in an open source reporting tool based on
> the Eclipse development framework? If so, have you looked at the BIRT
> project?
>sql