Web reporting tools: get rid of Crystal and get yourself a life

Posted by Peter van Ooijen on July 21, 2005

Having used both Crystal Reports (CR) and SQL Reporting Services
(RS) for a web-app I’m fully convinced. I’ve had enough of CR for once
and for all. Oh yes, I have build great reports with CR but it was a
bumpy road. Getting it all to work was favorite blog fodder,
the many responses tell I’m not the only one with frustrations. What
surprises me is that many people think RS is an overkill. This is not
the case, let me sum up some of my pleasant RS experiences. You think
for yourself how CR compares on these points

  • An RS license is part of a MS sql server license. So when you have a sql server it is free
  • Initial setup of  RS is no big deal. No registry
    settings, no folder settings. After that anybody (with the right
    privileges) can upload reports with a browser.
  • RS works very intuitive with data, a report works on one SQL query, a subreport is a new report with a new SQL query
  • RS uses plain VBscript for expressions
  • An RS report can load .net assemblies

The learning curve for RS is not steep, as it builds on your
existing knowledge. I don’t want to speak for the “power user” who
builds his own reports. Actually I don’t think such a person is common.
Real reporters work with Excel, one of the many RS export formats in
the box.

You might argue that RS increases the monopoly of Microsoft, another
kind of product where they are trying to be marker leader. Could be,
but I prefer a good night of sleep.

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  • http://codebetter.com/blogs/brendan.tompkins Brendan Tompkins

    Bravo!

  • http://www.bradheintz.com/ BradHeintz.com

    I’m going to go ahead and disagree with you about the quality of RS. (Not that CR is any great shakes.) This thing came out half-baked. Yes, the report definitions and all that are nice, but if you try doing anything at all off the beaten path – for example, implementing custom security – it’s a configuration nightmare. They made it FAR more complex than it needs to be, and my trip into the guts of RS left me convinced that they should have waited and released a better-quality with the next SQL Server.

    Frankly, I’d rather have done the whole thing by hand on a LAMP stack with MySQL.

  • Red5

    We too are dumping CR, but not in favor of Reporting Services. Instead, we chose ActiveReports from DataDynamics. I agree with BradHeintz, that RS is half-baked. Just the PDF generation alone was enough to convince us that RS needs to get it act together more fully before our company even considers it an optional reporting tool.

  • http://codebetter.com/blogs/steve.hebert Steve Hebert

    Amen to that. I’ve long felt ActiveReports is a vastly superior product to Crystal for many years, at least for my usage needs.

  • http://tonetheman.us/wordpress tonetheman

    I have used CR and it garbage. Sadly though it is the most visible garbage and does somewhat work. When we need to switch we looked at MS RS and it was just not finished. It was really clear the first release was just not done yet. The security was just lacking or was not there at all really. Active Reports is a better choice between those. We have since looked at web focus and some other choices. I remain convinced that this is still a space for some company with a “real” solution to come in and just wipe the floor up with the crappy products that are currently there.

  • http://jcooney.net JosephCooney

    CR is terrible – how it ever became the “industry standard” that is (and how it remains in VS) is beyond me. The first thing I do when I install VS now is un-check the installation of crystal.

  • Crystal in NYC

    Maybe I’m weird, but I’ve been using CR for several years and find it extremely easy to make great looking reports. Not being well versed in VB is really holding me back with SRS, which is, of course, the direction we’re moving. It still seems cumbersome to create a custom design (as opposed to just straight table data).

  • http://codebetter.com/blogs/peter.van.ooijen/ pvanooijen

    :) you’re not weird :)
    Developers are weird. CR maybe OK as a stand-alone report writer but for a developer including a report in your app, and specially deploying it, is a nightmare.

  • Saurabh

    Guys what do you think about Logi Report
    i am looking for a good web-reporting tool and found you blog quite helpful.
    Also how would you compare ActiveReports – LogiReport – Style Report

  • http://www.raqsoft.com freezea

    hey, have you ever heard of RAQ Report, which is a Free and Full-featured Reporting Tool, featured with various powerful functions, and a best choice for people who want to create a web report, even better

  • http://www.raqsoft.com freezea

    have you ever heard of RAQ Reprot, which is an all Free and Full-featured Reporting Tool, and is easier to use, maybe it’s your best choice

  • coder1

    You may try VIEWidget for Javascript PHP or ASP.NET or Java. 
    It works with all major browers.

    It is a javascript-programmable report & technical drawing generator and print preview control.
    You may use VIEWidget to generate reports or technical drawings, 
    display the results in a scrolling and zooming viewer on your web page and then print it.
    It is a very flexible and productive RAD tool as it lets you freely draw tables or 
    other objects at arbitrary x-y coordinates. It can generate sophisticated reports that are 
    difficult or impossible to create with a static report writer or conventional report generator.

    Below is a simple Hello World example for two print-preview pages 
    with page footers for page numbering:

        //get length unit 
        var INCH = control1.getInch(); 

        //create document
        control1.startDoc(); 

        control1.drawString(1*INCH, 1*INCH, “Hello World from Page 1″);
        control1.drawPageFooter(“Page 1″,”align=center”);

        //…draw other stuff here 

        //create 2nd page 
        control1.newPage(); 
        control1.drawString(1*INCH, 1*INCH, “Hello World from Page 2″); 
        control1.drawPageFooter(“Page 2″,”align=center”);

        //…draw other stuff here 

        //end document 
        control1.endDoc(); 

        //preview first page (page index=0)
        control1.setCurrentPage(0); 
        control1.preview(); 

    VIEWidget link:
    http://hexatech.com/viewidget

  • Terry Lawton

    Nice post. Here’s a tool to use to create and publish your report online in minutes, without coding. You can create different graphs and layouts http://www.caspio.com/online-database/features/reports.aspx