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smeggheadFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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Reporting Tool

Hi,

I have to write some reports for a large database application.

In the past I've used crystal reports, which I've found to be very flexible. However, releasing the crystal components to the client's machines in a pain in the arse.

Are there any alternatives to crystal ?? I want something quite simple, but also something that can just be released as part of our software rather than being dependant on 3rd party components.

Any suggestsions ??

Smg.
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Joeisanerd
creating setup projects that include the crystal components is pretty easy if you are using Visual Studio .NET

If you have a program that uses crystal reports 8 or 8.5, then you are in for no fun.

You could always create a setup project that only includes the cyrstal components and then install that on you client machines so you other projects will work just fine.

I don't know of any alternatives, especially any that are free.
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Éric Moreau
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smegghead
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ASKER

Hi emoreau, not seen much of you recently.. or are you on other topics nowadays??

My application is a 3 tier client server (sorry, I should've mentioned that)

The clients connect to an application server which is accesses using remoting. And the server(s) then connect to the database server (which may or may not be on the same machine as the app server.

I've done it in the past where I've used crystal to run the report on the server, and save the results to a .pdf file - then point the clients browser to this file.

This works quite well, but was looking into other ways of doing it.. as we need to be able to install our system very easily, and I remember having trouble installing crystal. Does VS.net 2003 come with better crystal integration ??

Smg.
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Éric Moreau
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>>Hi emoreau, not seen much of you recently.. or are you on other topics nowadays??

I am mainly into VB topics (VB, VB Controls, VB Databases) and .Net.

>>and I remember having trouble installing crystal. Does VS.net 2003 come with better crystal integration ??

.Net and Crystal now have a better integration and it is really easier to deploy.
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Éric Moreau
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And it's free!
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eternal_21
smegghead,

  Visual Studio 2002, or 2003?
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smegghead
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ASKER

2002, but we could consider upgrading to 2003 if we had to !! it's a one off cost and if it saves us time and effort in the future...
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eternal_21
What I had in mind was creating a Setup Project with all the Crystal Reports Merge Modules that a .NET project might need.  You could deploy this assembly on your network (think IntelliMirror or SMS), and then all the workstations would be able to use Crystal Reports components in any .NET application that they are running.

I have done this but it was for 2003 and I know they are a little different.  If you would like more details, let me know!
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Joeisanerd
I mentioned creating a setup project with the crystal components above.
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eternal_21
> "You could always create a setup project that only includes the cyrstal components and then install that on you client machines so you other projects will work just fine."

I read your post, but somehow I missed that... Sorry about that, Joeisanerd!
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smegghead
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ASKER

I'm actually more interested alternative ways of producing reports, I know how to deploy Crystal reports by creating a setup program, I have done this in the past.

I've looked into Microsoft's "Reporting Services", and it looks quite good.. I like the idea of submitting an XML documents to a 'reporting' server, which processes it and returns the results.

I can't find much documentation on this though. Has anybody used it successfully ??

There also seems to be a tool within SQL server 2000+, which allows reports to be produced, but again, I can't find much info on this on the web.

Smg.
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Éric Moreau
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>>I can't find much documentation on this though. Has anybody used it successfully ??

This product is very new. That's why not many programmers used it as of now.