It's probably not very productive to make overly general statements like
these.

There may be problems with RS. But it is still a fantastic product. For many
types of reports, at least the ones I've tried, these statements--with the
exception of 4)--are certainly not true. The fact a lot of people have
started using it and moving it into production has led me to concentrate on
figuring out how to support the product. My overall experience has been
postive so far.

Linchi

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Paul,

I wish I was on that lab/workshop...You don't mention it but how much real
life experience the trainer had with RS? Did he swear in Crystal I wonder
:-)

Anyway, please find my comments inline for whatever they are worth for.

--
Hope this helps.

----------------------------------------------
Teo Lachev, MCSD, MCT
Author: "Microsoft Reporting Services in Action"
http://www.prologika.com


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Teo: We had quite a number of RS-based enterprise-level projects at HP and
our experience is entirely positive. I wonder what alternative the trainer
has suggested if RS is not an option?

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Teo: As with everything new, there is a learning curve involved. Product
support times - example, please?

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Teo: Again, example please? RS can integrate with native and custom .NET
assemblies, which means that you can leverage the full power of .NET. Is
this inadequate?

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Teo: Using the VS.NET Report Designer is one and perhaps the most popular
option of authoring reports. You can use third-party tools, author RDL
programatically, etc. BTW, you don't have to buy the whole VS.NET stack to
get the Report Designer. Instead, you can purchase only VB.NET. How must is
this: $90? Can we compare this with the cost of other so called enterprise
reporting tools? Finally, the next version of RS will not require VS.NET
since you will be able to author reports in the SQL Server 2005 Development
Studio.


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To add something else, the main issue I have seen is people that have a set
idea on how they want to solve the problem instead of solving it a different
way. There are many Crystal Report users that are ecstatic over switching.
Others who it totally bums them that something CR does you can't do (or
can't do in the same way).

If you want to integrate into an existing ASP.net site then between URL
integration and web services you can do very tight and seamless (to the
user) integration. Integrated security works great (a big issue with
Enterprise reporting). Drill through is extemely easy and powerful.

I have been live since the end of the beta. A few issues but nothing I
couldn't work around. I at first had my "server" a PC runing 2000 Pro and I
had some stability issues. Since I moved it to a Windows 2003 Server machine
all the stability issues have gone away.

As far as stability of the development environment. I have never crashed it
and lost any work so I don't know what the guy is talking about.

As far as doing functions. The code behind is very easy to do, it just does
not have integrated debugging of the code behind in the report. I tend to
create another Winapp with a button to test out the code before I cut and
paste it. But the real point here is that you will find that there is very
little need to embed any custom code. The expression support includes a lot
of vb.net libraries built in and usually I can solve issues with expressions
and no need for custom coding.

If you have anybody that is a dotnet programmer then you can have your own
custom assemblys that can be called.

The trainers sound to me like they haven't used it and don't know the
product.


Bruce L-C


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1) RS is still in its infancy, unstable , unsuitable and unreliable for
enterprise deployments
boy SOMEBODY needs to tell the corporations which have already deployed
it successfully in an enterprise environment that it doesn't work!
2) Could turn into a long drawn-out development and product support times
have no idea what this means
3)The Report Designer is Error-prone, inadequate means of doing functions
no major errors here that we have seen. But yes you must be
'programmer' oriented to do anything but the simplest reports
4)For the average user to design a report, they require a Visual STudio
..Net
2003 license.
YES

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