I have been replacing Powerbuilder reports and people are pretty ecstatic.
This is a version 1 product but as such it is pretty complete. The main
issue I have seen people have is when they either don't want to do something
a different way or they might have a requirement that currently is hard for
Reporting Services to do. For instance, one of the people responding to you
is unhappy with it. One issue he had was not being able to change the source
on the fly. Personally I don't have that issue and I think a lot of people
will not have that problem. The development server can easily go against a
different database and it is very easy to deploy to the production server
that goes against a different database. What some people have a problem with
is when they have multiple databases that they want to switch a single
report to on the fly. Let's say each department has their own database and
you want to have a single report that goes against each department database
(versus all the data for each department is in the same database and the
data just needs to return only the data for the particular department). The
other issue I have seen people have is when the whole purpose of the
reporting is to print very detailed (for instance to preprinted pages) and
very large reparts (1,000s of printed pages).

If, however the intent is to make it very easy and very quick for users to
get to the information they want. Drill down, drill through. If your data
resides in databases where a particular report is supposed to go against a
particular server (remembering that it is very easy to change where the
reports go against a particular database for instance development database
versus production database). Then, I think you will be very happy.

Some former crystal report users are ecstatic others are unhappy. I think if
you want to develop reports taking advantage of the strengths of the system
(versus coming with predetermined ideas of how it should all work) then you
will be happy with the result. There will be an SP2 (which will allow client
printing without have to use the export capability). And of course within
the year there will be the next version which comes out with Yukon (next
version of SQL Server). I feel RS has a very strong foundation that it is
building on and that the pace of improvement will be rapid.

One other point, it is also very extensible and lots of people have extended
it.

HTH,


--
Bruce Loehle-Conger
MVP SQL Server Reporting Services


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Hi all,
We are considering to start using one tool for creating reports on our
company. Today we are using ASP(web) for some reports and PowerBuilder for
som reports and som custombuilt system from IFS for finacial data.
I've started to try out Reporting services a few weeks ago and I got very
impressed, mostly at Reporting services ability to export to different
formats.

Now to my question. I need referenses to test where they compare systems as
Chrystal, MSRS, and other tools..

Anyone with this information? PLS answer to this thread!!

regards
Kjell Brandes

Thanx!!

K


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