October 15, 2019 at 3:08 pm
My comany has recently been forced into SSRS reporting b/c the accounting software we use has switched from supporting Crystal Reports to SSRS when it comes to the clients creating their own custom reports. We use SQL Server fro a DB/Back-end and the web based accounting application used the CR Report Viewer control before but now uses the SSRS report viewer control . When we used Crystal Reports it was amazing what we could do not only in terms of what we could show but how good we could make the report look. With SSRS, every report we've seen and the accounting software vendor has provided a number of these when we upgraded to their product that uses SSRS instead of Crystal Reports, looks anywhere from bland to ugly. From what I can tell this seems to be an issue with SSRS, that you can;t get great looking/professional reports like you could with Crystal. Our experience is limited with what the software vendor has provided so it could be that the problem is with them and not SSRS. Do any of your with experience using SSRS have any suggestion or thoughts on SSRS report quality in terms of how they look? Are you able to get good looking SSRS reports?
NOTE: It also should be noted that the style or flavor of SSRS reports is the one that uses the rdlc file extension so maybe that is a limiting factor; I just don't know. We have high end owners we have to provide reports to and so far everything we've seen with SSRS based reports (that use rdlc file type) are just ugly and I'm trying to see if there is a way to correct this or if its just a limitation of the SSRS report engine/system. Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Kindest Regards,
Just say No to Facebook!October 15, 2019 at 3:38 pm
In my experience, you are correct. SSRS is the least flexible of the reporting tools that I have used. This is how I would rank the ones that I have used: Crystal Reports, Cognos, and SSRS.
Drew
J. Drew Allen
Business Intelligence Analyst
Philadelphia, PA
October 15, 2019 at 4:03 pm
SSSR is just a terrible report designer in how it works. I can not for the life of me understand why they opted for the table/matrix/tablix style of design instead of the banded style that Crystal used. I know that some reports are harder to develop in Crystal because its uses the banded report design but they represent just a few of the report types and all the rest are far easier to do with a banded designer like Crystal. Even MS Accesses report designer was easier to use then what SSRS has.
How do you deal with custom reporting when the report is not a BI style report, something like a traditional financial ( General ledger) or transaction style (aging summary for payable or receivables) or even letter style? In Crystal this was essay but in SSRS (from what I've explored so far) its like trying to pull a kids tooth and when you do get it done its awful looking. The accounting software we use supports SSRS/RDLC style reporting but I'm not opposed to seeking alternatives if there's a way to integrate them or use them outside of the application. Our data source is a SQL Server 2016 DB and we have direct access via SQL Security so we don't have to use the accounting software implementation of SSRS but its preferred because it is integrated. The nice thing with this integration is we don;t have to design the SSRS report with any filtering because that's done in the accounting software. I need only create the report in SSRS and of course set up a data connection and everything else required but any user side filtering (i.e. what entities to run some report for) are handled in the application. I mention this because from what I've read so far parameters area pain in SSRS.
All of that said if we can't get SSRS/RDLC to produce better looking reports we may not have much choice but to seek an alternative reporting tool. Its times like this that I really miss Crystal Reports.
Kindest Regards,
Just say No to Facebook!Viewing 3 posts - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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