SQL Server Reporting Services and Crystal Reports: A Competitive Analysis

When deciding which tool to standardize on, it's important to look at the architecture of each tool. Within this paper I listed the differences between the two products and also mentioned how each design decision comes with certain advantages and disadvantages. Remember to test each reporting tool against the functionality that is critical to your reporting requirements. Determine which product best fits your needs before making your choice.

Overall, both tools are an excellent choice for implementing reporting capabilities into your applications, but they cater to different audiences. Crystal Reports has the benefit of being the veteran in the field and supports almost every conceivable reporting requirement there is. It has versions for developers as well as business users. SSRS is the new kid on the block and it is focused only on the developer market. SSRS is a 1.0 release and still has some growing pains to go through. If your company's users have a broad range of reporting requirements and expect their reports to look a certain way, then Crystal Reports could be your best bet. If your developers want to use the latest tools and you have the resources to write the code for the missing functionality, then SSRS could be your choice.

Reporting Tools Feature Summary

Feature	Crystal Reports XI	Reporting Services
Version	11.0	1.0
File Format	Binary (.RPT) Uses SDKs to access objects	XML (.RDL) Editable with Notepad
Target User	Business User and Developer	Developer
Designer Interface	Banded	Object based
License Cost	CR.NET - Free Dev Edition - $300 Upgrade CR Server - $7,500	Included with SQL Server 2000 Additional Server - $5,000 Enterprise License - $20,000
Extensibility	Closed architecture	Open architecture
Data Connectivity	Single point of entry CR Server - Shared data source	Shared data sources
DataSet Reporting	Supported	Not Supported
Table Object	Not Supported	Supported
Forms Authentication	Supported	Not Supported Enterprise license support
WYSIWYG formatting	Precise	HTML focused
Formula Library	50+ financial functions 4 dozen date functions	13 financial functions Half dozen date functions
Sub-reports	One level deep	20 levels deep Object based reporting improves on sub-reports
CSS	Supported	Minimal support
Export granular control	Not Supported	Supported