Crystal Reports and Visual Studio
I have used Crystal Reports in a number of .Net projects. It is shipped with Visual Studio 2003 and will also be part of Visual Studio 2005. If you want to use Crystal in your application, you will need to register the version that comes with Visual Studio. Registration of that version is free, and it get's you access to developers section on the Business Objects website.
Today I was asked to get a co-worker started with Crystal Reports and so I went looking for information. I soon discovered that a lot of interesting stuff is on MSDN, you just need to know where to look. All the information below, and more, can be found here on the Microsoft MSDN website.
Crystal Reports Reviewer's Guide
This reviewer's guide provides an overview of the features, power and ease of use of Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET. It advertises Crystal reports as follows:
Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET is the definitive out of the box reporting technology for use in .NET Windows and Web applications.
Getting Started Guide
This whitepaper provides step-by-step instructions on the details of generating and displaying reports in various deployment scenarios and application environments using Crystal Reports for Visual Studio.NET 2003. And you can download all the code for this guide here.
Interested?
I think everyone should be interested in Crystal Reports. It's easy to use, supported by Microsoft, and you can deploy your applications using the version in Visual Studio without a problem or licensing fee. I know Reporting Services are cool, but you need SQL Server to use it. And sometimes you have to work with Oracle, MySQL or even Access.
Those of you that have Visual Studio 2005 installed can quickly see what Crystal Reports has to offer. To do so, follow these steps:
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From the file menu, select New Web Site.
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In the dialog you should see ASP.NET Crystal Reports Web Site. Select that project type.
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When Visual Studio has finished creating the project, press F5 to run the website.
You should see a pie-chart with sales figures for various countries. Click a section of the pie chart, to zoom in on the sales for a particular country. Crystal then shows another chart with the sales for that country specified by state or region. The demo report allows you to go 5 levels deep.
You can also print the report, using the print button on the webpage. Or export it, using the export button, to one of the following formats: Acrobat PDF, Word, Excel 97-2000, Rich Text Format.