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Posted by: TM Central	10/2/2007 11:27 AM
For the past decade, when developing in a MS world, Crystal Reports was the defacto standard you worked in. Most larger apps had some sort of Crystal interface for custom reports and many companies mandated it as the "one-size-fits-all" reporting component. This is true today where Crystal comes bundled as part of Visual Studio - the main development IDE for the .NET Framework. However, Crystal is not universally loved or even tolerated (see http://secretgeek.net/CrystalDodo.asp). Our experience has been that Crystal's pre-.NET functionality put it out in front of the competitors 6-7 years ago, but its "face-lift" has not been good. They have essentially tried to take the same core-code and port it into the .NET CLR while adding web-access. At the same time, they apparently felt that different methods of delivery now possible for any reporting system mandated a bewildering set of licenses and price increases. Thus, we've been looking at some possible replacements. The one that stands out so far is XtraReports from DevExpress (http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/WinForms/XtraReports/). They tout it as being 100% .NET while the reports themselves are completely divorced from the presentation method (though Crystal also has this ability). Reports are said to be rendered in 100% HTML - the only "global display medium" is our opinion - and the report controller is divorced from the report itself so it may be located anywhere and customized. We are now evaluating this as a possible long-term replacement for Crystal and we'll post on our progress!
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