Never Use Crystal Reports Again

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Michael Schurter

I’m sick of being suckered into using Crystal Reports because it comes free with Microsoft Visual Studio. Crystal Reports and its API are easily the most buggy, most poorly designed, and worst documented I’ve ever worked with.

So I thought I’d dump a list of some alternatives I’ve stumbled across – both open source and proprietary reporting solutions:

  1. ComponentOne Reports – Proprietary, but I’ve used it and it works (for .Net)
  2. Microsoft Reporting Services – Builtin to Visual Studio 2005
  3. SharpReport (demo video) – Part of the excellent open source SharpDevelop IDE
  4. JasperReports – The famous open source reporting package (Java)
  5. fyiReporting – Open source (GPL) reporting for .Net
  6. OpenReport – Looks like a powerful XML > PDF/HTML engine (GPL)
  7. DataVision – Open source Java reporting
  8. Eclipse BIRT – Open source Java reporting from the excellent Eclipse project
  9. JFreeReport – Yet another open source reporting solution for Java
  10. Agate Report – Brazillian open source PHP reporting solution with a designer written in PHP-GTK+. You have to see it to believe it!

Please post other reporting solutions, or reviews of the ones I’ve listed, in the comments below.

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  • http://digitalfiefdom.org AC

    Finally gave up eh? Welcome to a happier world.

  • http://magerquark.de Uwe Keim (required)

    Fully agree!

  • David Ellard

    Um

  • Sparky

    You left out FastReport. I’ve used it in many projects, and it has evolved to one of the easiest and most powerful reporting systems out there.

  • Kooper

    Stonefield Query is quick and easy to install with little help or no assitance from the IT staff. No software is installed on the database server, eliminating another IT bottleneck. Simply install the software on your pc and specify the database connection to use.