I ran into an old bud last month. He's doing quite a bit of Crystal consulting. This doesn't surprise me, but due to arcane licensing of Crystal, a lot of shops still run old versions.


>Hi, Gerard,
>
>First, I wrote a comparison of Crystal and SSRS:
>
>http://www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid=0711041
>
>(Now, at the moment, you have to be a subscriber to read past the first page. However, when the 'newest' issue becomes available, anyone will be able to read it)
>
>Second, I'm planning a blog entry very soon (probably right after Christmas) as a continuation of that article, with some personal recommendations between the two products. (I tried to keep the article free of opinions).
>
>In a nutshell:
>
>1) Crystal provides more power than SSRS. You can do more with Crystal than you can with SSRS. Quite simply, Crystal provides more critical options....everything from more control over a page to more control over data.
>
>SSRS has only been around for 2 versions, while CR has been around for 11 versions (soon to be 12) - so it's only natural that CR would have more functionality.
>
>2) However, Crystal's overall interface can be very very challenging. This leads to people concluding, "Crystal sucks". I personally think some of those conclusions are a bit hasty, but not completely unwarranted.
>
>However, as someone who has now built a substantial amount of reports with both products, I can say that those who scream about CR should try building output with complex reqmts in SSRS, and then come back and see if their opinion has changed.
>
>If you have any specific questions, I'll be happy to answer them.
>
>Kevin