SQL Server Reporting Services와 Crystal Reports 비교

SQL Server Reporting Services와 Crystal Reports 비교

---

어떤 Crystal Reports 및 SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services)를 사용하는 것이 더 좋습니까?

---

한편으로 Crystal Reports는 비싸고 과장된 당나귀 똥 더미이며 다른 한편으로 SSRS는 실제로 CR 마케팅이 제공하는 모든 약속을 이행하며 무료입니다.

CR에 대한 저의 경멸은 수년 동안 끔찍한 것을 사용해야 할 의무가 있기 때문입니다. Clubbing the Crystal Dodo 또는 Crystal Reports Sucks Donkey Dork (재미 있지는 않지만 오히려 글을 읽고 기술적 인 세부 사항으로 입증 됨)과 같은 참고 자료를 제공 할 수있을 때 CR의 끔찍함을 자세히 설명 할 필요가 없습니다.

비어 있는?! 예. MS SQL Server를 구매할 필요도 없습니다. 고급 서비스와 함께 SQL Express를 설치할 수 있습니다. SQL Server Reporting Services가 포함 된 다운로드 로 제공됩니다 . SQL Express는 지원할 수있는 동시 사용자 수에 제한이 있지만 다음과 같은 관찰이 두드러집니다.

• SQL Express의 일부로 얻은 SSRS에 대한 라이선스는 SQL Express의 일부로 배포하기 만하면됩니다. 다른 데이터 원본에 대한 연결을 금지하거나 보고서가 SQL Server에서 데이터를 가져 오도록 요구하는 것은 없습니다.

• 위에서 언급 한 SSRS 버전에는 사용자 연결에 대한 본질적인 제한이 없습니다. 모든 제한은 SQL Express 데이터베이스 엔진에 적용됩니다.

• SSRS는 Oracle, Jet (Access), OLEDB 및 ODBC 용 드라이버를 포함하는 ADO.NET을 사용합니다.

따라서 무료 버전의 SSRS를 MySQL을 포함하는 ADO.NET을 연결할 수있는 모든 백엔드에 연결할 수 있습니다. Rory는 이것이 "지원되지 않는다"고 아래의 주석에서 들었습니다. 그건 사실이야하지만 난 드라이버가 공급되지 않는 상태를 금지는 것을 라이센스에서 아무것도 찾을 수 없습니다 SSExpress에 의해 그들이 확실히 하는 비주얼 스튜디오의 대부분의 버전에서 제공하고 당신이 당신의 설치 키트를 제공 할 수 있습니다. 이것은 명시 적으로 지원되는 구성이 아닐 수 있지만 어떻게해야합니까? 전체 MSSQL 라이선스를 가지고 있더라도 Microsoft가 타사 데이터베이스와 대화하는 데 도움이 될 것으로 기대하는 것은 다소 의문 일 것입니다.

저는 SSRS를 내부 보고서와 많은 유료 고객에게 국 서비스를 제공하는 ASP.NET 응용 프로그램에 포함 된 외부 보고서에 광범위하게 사용합니다. 우리의 경우 백업 저장소는 Microsoft SQL Server 2008의 라이선스 사본이지만 이는보고 솔루션의 기술적 장점에 부수적 인 것입니다.

Crystal Reports가 지원한다고 주장하지만 작동하지 않거나 5 명 이상의 사용자를 원할 경우 엄청나게 비싼 라이센스가 필요한 기능 목록이 많습니다. SQL을 올바르게 수행하기 위해 CR을 신뢰할 수도 없습니다. SELECT COUNT(*) FROM SOMETABLE WHERE 1=00의 결과를 생성해야하지만 1 을 생성합니다 . 내장 된 쿼리 엔진에 결함이 있으며 아마추어들이 무료로 할 수있는 일 (예 : MySQL)을 망쳐 놓은 팀은 코드에서 성능으로 설명 할 수있는 것을 얻을 희망이 없습니다.

그리고 그들은 그렇지 않습니다. 사악한 것은 바닥이없는 버킷처럼 메모리를 누출하며, SQL 프로파일 링 도구를 사용하면 매우 비효율적이라는 것을 알게 될 것입니다 .

주장 된 지원에 관해서는 대화 크기 조정 버그 가 처음 공개 된 후 수십 년 동안 수정되지 않았 음을 개인적으로 증명할 수 있습니다 . 당신이 신용 카드를 꺼내서 요구 된 갈취적인 몸값을 지불한다면 (저도 그런 공포를 지원하기 위해 멋진 돈을 원할 것입니다) 당신은 자신의 이름이 데이비드라고 주장하는 사람과 이야기를 나눌 수있을 것입니다. 그리고 누가 당신의 질문을 이해하지 못하더라도 대답이 훨씬 적습니다.

SSRS 지원 상황은 상당히 유사하지만 실제로 작동하므로 많이 필요하지 않습니다.

반면 SSRS는 CR이 주장하는 모든 작업을 수행합니다. 버그가없는 것은 아니지만 유쾌하게 적고 한 번 이상의 릴리스주기에서 살아남는 경우는 거의 없습니다.

SSRS 디자이너 UI는 Visual Studio IDE 내에서 호스팅됩니다. 전형적인 마이크로 소프트 스타일로 매력적으로 표현되었지만, 그 이상으로 기존의 보고서 디자이너로부터 몇 가지 간단하지만 근본적인 이탈을 통합하여 상당히 잘 고려되었습니다. 예를 들어, 표 형식의 데이터를 표시하려면 개별 텍스트 상자를 다루지 않고 표를 정의합니다. 결과적으로 정렬을 시도 할 필요가 없으며 테두리를 배치하는 것은 간단한 스타일 시트 연습입니다.

SSRS는 실제로 CR이 주장하는 모든 작업을 수행하고 저렴하며 광범위하고 신뢰할 수있는 기술 문서가 있으며 확장 (문서화)하도록 설계되었으며 ODBC 드라이버를 얻을 수있는 모든 항목에 연결할 수 있습니다. 이것은 생각할 필요가 없습니다.

SSRS의 몇 가지 단점

• 페이지 머리글과 바닥 글의 필드를 바인딩하는 방법은 명확하지 않습니다.
• 내가 아는 한 페이지 하단을 기준으로 위치를 지정할 수 없습니다. 이것은 특정 유형의 보고서에 대한 진정한 문제이며 해결 방법이 없다고 생각할 수있는 문제입니다.
• 교차 표에서 확장 수평 롤업은 지원되지 않습니다.
• 보고서 머리글 및 바닥 글에 대한 직접적인 지원은 없습니다. 페이지 나누기 속성을 적절하게 설정하여 보고서 레이아웃의 위쪽과 아래쪽에 Rectangle 개체를 사용합니다. 또는 하위 보고서를 사용합니다. 이것에 대해 불평하는 사람들은 분명히 그렇게 열심히 노력하지 않았습니다.
• 겹치는 그룹 간격에 대한 지원 부족 (CR 그룹화 시스템이이를 수행 할 수 있음) UPDATE SSRS 2008 R2가 이제이를 지원합니다. 그룹화 편집 대화 상자에 묻혀 있습니다. "그룹 변수"를 찾고 이것을 읽으십시오 .

It actually looks like overlapping groups can be done with SSRS2005 too, although I never knew that. I wonder did anyone ever crack the bottom-relative positioning issue?

---

I've been using Crystal report till version 10 and was always doing stuff i wanted successfully along with ASP.NET applications. Its output on web is really good like WYSIWYG and exports to Excel and PDF are also accurate. Printing is also marvellously correct.

Recently, i've been working on SSRS 2005 for around an year and have been living to witness so many lackings that must have been provided out-of-the-box too. SSRS web output varies greatly with different browsers and diff resolutions and would easily make a developer sick. Moreover, the scrolling issues with report viewer would make an end-user mad quite early as it is based on HTML using an IFRAME. (Note: Crystal 13 uses an IFRAME in the web-viewer which suffers from sporadic text-wrapping and overlapping issues). The exports are not good at all. You cannot align images left or center in cells and cannot specify background colors for images. You cannot center align complete report body. For possibility, i've played with the rendered HTML for hours and figured out exact replacements to make that works, but these simple fixes were not known to SSRS developers i guess because probably, they never used SSRS for themselves.

Further, in web applications, you need to bear the bad UI for parameters out-of-the-box. I have simply removed it completely and the cost of creating it in ASPX pages made me think to design tabular reports in DataGrids instead using ObjectDataSource and database pagination technique. You cannot layout the parameters to your needs. Bugs in paramters sections postsback complete reports without any changes. Paging with grouping works with a trick, but than sorting fails on complete dataset. For every bit of medium to advanced level of UI requirement, SSRS costs so much of time figuring out that it is simply not possible. As there are less of SSRS users, online community has no good solutions for simple problems. Not to forget the good side of SSRS is its deployment, notifications built-in, caching and configuration side, but no UI to win.

BOTTOMLINE is that i've seen SSRS frustating you just due to the nonresponsiveness of Microsoft Support team when they have to say 'sorry! not now' after a month. SSRS 2008 also doesn't have many of these issues fixed rightaway. Moreover, moving to SSRS' 08 means a complete migration of back-end platforms as well. Keeping the equation in mind that the more you use a software, the more it gets mature over time, Crystal is anyways a much better choice because, SSRS soon accumulates costs for fixing their bugs by yourselve.

---

You can deploy an app using Reporting Services by including 3 DLL files. That's a huge benefit. (Note--you have to get one of the 3 DLL files from the GAC.)

With Crystal Reports, you have to install the runtime on each machine that will run the application (either a website or client app).

Reporting Services has all of the features most people need, and the deployment is MUCH easier. I will never user Crystal Reports unless I have to.

---

Since this thread has popped back open, I'll add my two cents. I had to use Crystal for about three years during the version 7 and 8 days. I hated every minute of it. I've seen a little bit of the newer versions and still don't like it.

I dislike it so much that it pains me to say this: from my experience Crystal's better suited than SSRS for complex reports. A coworker and I tried desperately to get a moderately complex report layout to work in SSRS and gave up. My impression of the product -- just my opinion, mind you -- is that it's not quite ready for prime time.

Crystal will make you hate your life and look for another job, but there's a reason it's so pervasive: it works.

---

Reporting Services is much better in my experience. It is a better environment, but best of all the connections (data sources) are separate from the report and can be shared. This makes for much simpler deployment between environments.

---

I've used both, I'll add a couple of points to what's already been said:

• For simple stuff, I'd recommend SSRS by default. Crystal is a bit bloated and quirky.

• Crystal can easily export to MS Word format (.doc). Customers want this pretty often in my experience.

• If formatting is important, Crystal may be better. For example, SSRS reports can't have more than one type of text in a single text box. Meaning that you can't have, say, a comment at the top of the report that has both italics and normal text. Crystal can do this:

---

Note: This report contains data from start date to end date inclusive of those dates.

---

SRSS can't (without multiple overlapping textboxes). I once had a 20 page word document given to me, to be converted to a report with data for the dozen or so graphs and tables in it. I started out in SSRS, but realised that in Crystal I could just copy and paste the hardcoded bits of the report straight from word, with coloured headings and all, and saved days of work. So Crystal does have a better "designer" in many respects.

Update:
Apparently both of these issues have been fixed in the current SRSS. Anyone care to comment further on this?

---

I agree with @Carlton partly for the reasons he describes. I also think that reporting services is a more mature product (even though Crystal Reports has been around longer). The Test and deploy model is pretty hearty, and the built-in ability to track report usage is very helpful.

I also find it much easier to design reports in Reporting Services - Microsoft has learned how to build a good IDE, whereas the Crystal IDE has always seemed like an after thought (though that's better than an afterbirth, which is what it used to be).

Edit: Additional thoughts I also think that in a Windows shop, SSRS offers all kinds of sweet integrations with the OS and SQL Server. You can rely on SQL assemblies for built-in code reuse fairly easily in SSRS, and the integration with the Active Directory security model makes securing your reports very easy.

---

Man...my company has sooo many crystal reports...and the company before that had lots too. From version 8.5 to 11.5. They kind of already have their foot in the door so to speak. I think the CrystalReportViewer is a steaming piece of crap but it does work(for the most part).

After reading some of these answers, I'm switching to SSRS for my next reporting project! The writing is on the wall...MS will drop Crystal from VS and replace with SSRS. The only thing that's going to suck is when MS starts charging for it.

EDIT: Messing around with SSRS today and it looks quite promising. I must say the designer is taking some getting used to...CR Designer has it beat in ease of use. You can tell this is designed for programmers where as CR is geared toward report designers.

EDIT2: SSRS really fails to meet my reporting needs. Designing reports sucks when you want to preview and no parameter prompting available for standalone. Is there a better way to design them...preferably not in VS?

---

Did you think about an alternative? If you want to use the features of Crystal Reports but don't want to pay so much for it you could have a look at Crystal-Clear which is an Java based reporting tool supporting Crystal Reports templates too. It comes with a GUI-designer and data sources are also configurable per system. (Almost ODBC-like, you just set a name for the connection and the connection is configured on the system.)

---

I wonder why no-one mentioned one big issue with CR - that it just fails in source control or team environment. Correct me if I am wrong but I really looked very hard for any report diff tools. There's one (released about year ago) but it just doesn't do well - not because it's bad but (I guess) because CR just don't expose report structure correctly or something... I tried to export .rpt to XML but it's clunky and wrong. I even tried to write my own .rpt comparer.

It's not about team development only; even if there's single developer it's a nightmare to maintain reports versions, and if your customer decided to add few things or to change few colors, you're now cursed to track every single textbox since there's absolutely no way to find out the changes.

RDL format is much more clean and open. And this can be a pretty major advantage.

---

I have used both for years. Crystal reports charges way too much and I try to use SSRS whenever possible. However, SSRS does not support firefox or any other browser, only IE, this is a problem. The reports in Crystal look nicer and the exports are more powerful, users want good exporting to Word. If you are a java programmer, I would use Jasper Reports, it is free and uses Java language for functions.

---

I've used both (Crystal Reports 2008 and SSRS 2008) because I did not notice this thread in time.

Apart from the setup which was a bit easier with CR, I could not notice a single feature where CR is at least on par with SSRS. Yes, Crystal Reports is really that bad.

In my opinion the absoultely worst part in CR is the IDE. But there are also other killer features, such as poor SQL performance and horribly looking graphs (at least in the CR version that comes with VS 2008) are also notable "killer" features.

---

I have worked with both CR and SSRS and this what i found.

Crystal Reports runs in its own memory while SSRS runs in the limited SQL Server memory.

Crystal report is way too expensive. Recently they have slashed their price to 250$ i think as a response to SSRS 2008 release.

SSRS is free.

The biggest reason why Crystal report thrives :

You can design 80% of reports in a project using SSRS. But for the remaining 20% you have to use some other reporting tool. These 20% reports are used by none other than top level managers , directors & CEO. Their requirement can never be undermined and CR does a wonderfull job there.

Crystal report is still COM based. which is a pain in the a**.

Crystal report is not lacking capabilities or features. It is the work horse of SAP. But lot of its classes are protected and dont provide access to programmers. This is by intention. The SAP people are so greedy they want to keep every feature under control and charge extra fortune for exposing the claases and objects to the developers under special license arrangement. Just debug and quick watch the ReportDocument object in VS you will know inspite of everything available in the object you can hardly use them in your code !!

As far as GUI & CSS issues are concerned expecting a COM object which is designed for precision printing , to render correctly in every browser is a moot point as even a simple div renders differently in different browsers.

I have been working with Crystal reports since 7 years and cursing it all the time while actively exploring all other alternatives. But i am yet to come across something as flexible as Cystal Report. For bulk of the work SSRS is good. But for Dashboards , Complex Reports with subreports, Balance sheets, trial balances i shall never waste my time in SSRS.

Just try a Google Trend search on Crystal Report. It has been steadily declining since last 6 years. surely the future does not look good for CR.

But Hey ! MS, SAP and ORACLE still endorse Crystal Report at the core of their applications !! and no BI product comes cheap.

---

I feel like a martian having an extensive and positive (but sometimes complex) experience with Crystal Reports, which is now completely integrated in our user interface (VBA), where requested reports parameters and filters are transparently inherited from the user interface ...

---

If you're considering SSRS and are concerned about the fact that it's "free" but you need to either buy and additional SQL Server license or distribute SQL Express, then you might be interested in Data Dynamics Reports

It offers all that is in SSRS and adds Master Reports, Themes, Calendar data region, Data Visualization (Databar, Sparkline, Iconset, ColorScale, ...), complete object model for maximum programming flexibility, royalty free end user report designer, barcode report item, excel template export and data merging, and much more. You can download a trial from Data Dynamics (now GrapeCity) and try it with few reports, you will not be disappointed.

---

I've worked with both now and have seen them side by side. Crystal has been good, but expensice over the years. Its clunky, but we've gron accustomed to it and familiar with the interface. I don't work in the LAMP environment, This house works with MS Dynamics and MAS with some pretty large clients.

I love not having to worry about the client install for SSRS. Distributions is far easier and sharing data sources and report models is working out well.

AS far as broweser go, I've seen perfectly rendered SSRS 2008 gauges in Firefox. I have exported those gauges to Excel without issue. I have deployed reports with and without MOSS to phones. The ability to use windows authentication to deploy reports as well as hide them is fantastic. The report viewer object in VS 2005 and later is sweet.

---

People, please refer to version of which you are talking about!

For example, the VS2008 built-in free RDLC reporting (the same as SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services) doesn't support binding fields in header and footer, and it is a basic feature!

Now I'm converting a huge report from this VS2008 Reporting / RDLC 2005 to Crystal Report 2008 Basic (which comes with VS2008) because it doesn't have this basic feature.

I am confident that Reporting Services 2.0 / RDLC 2008 (which comes with Visual Studio 2010) and better yet, the newest Reporting Services 3.0 / RDLC 2010 (which comes for FREE in SQL Server 2008 R2 Express With Advanced Services) are better SSRS solutions.

SQL Server R2 Express with Advanced Services (FREE) http://www.microsoft.com/express/Database/InstallOptions.aspx

Right now I am making a Proof of Concept for Reporting Services 3.0 / RDLC 2010, and will post the results.

Reporting Services (SSRS/RDLC) is always more easy to work, but easy comes with a price. For simple reports, always choose SSRS/RDLC. For complex reports with master-detail, page control and so on, please make a PoC of these scenarios with newest SSRS/RDLC versions (2008,2010) and also with Crystal Reports.

---

For those who are comparing the old Crystal Reports XI and Reporting Service 1.0 please see this 2005 post:

SQL Server Reporting Services and Crystal Reports: A Competitive Analysis http://www.crystalreportsbook.com/SSRSandCR_Conclusion.asp

참고URL : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/168427/compare-sql-server-reporting-services-to-crystal-reports