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Both reporting systems mentioned are top-quality systems that provide wide capacities for creating fine reports: from simple to complex ones. Any report implemented with one of the systems can be also created using the other one. Most features available in one system are available in another as well. It is clear that Microsoft simply wanted to replace Crystal Reports supplied with Visual Studio 2003 by a competitive system, and they achieved the result they needed. We believe that Microsoft Reporting Services functionality covers all functionality of Crystal Reports. At least, that's what our experience says.
At the same time, Reporting Services have some additional functions that Crystal Reports don't have. Above all, Reporting Services has the Report Builder. This is an application allowing end-users to create they own reports. Someone can say that not only Reporting Services provides such a nice function, for example, Active Reports have it too. However, Microsoft approached it very thoroughly, and they produced an extraordinary feature.
In all other end-user report designers, end-users can change layouts of existing reports with a fixed data source. Also if you need to create multiple reports, developers need to implement functionality for saving reports, accessing them, setting security access level and so on. Microsoft Reporting Services solves all the problems mentioned and some more. Using the Report Builder, business users can create new reports with data sources they need. They can create as many absolutely different reports as they need and set access level without involving developers.
With Reporting Services, developers just need to provide business objects to end-users. This can be easily done with database views (queries). After that, Reporting Services looks like a perfect meccano for business users.
Also, we have to note that business users don't need to have any special software installed to manage the reports. Reporting Services automatically downloads all necessary components from server and immediately allows managing reports.
Besides the Report Builder, Reporting Services provides automatic click-on-column sorting and drill-down. This is especially useful for creating reports for viewing on the web. It is not necessary to create complex stored procedures supporting all kinds of sorting and processing the sorting the reporting system needs.
Regarding the drill-down, you can very easily display only totals and subtotals on a report by default, and an end-user will have ability to drill-down to details she need. It is necessary to note, that drill-down will not open a new page and it doesn't hide the data already opened.
Summing up, we can say that both systems are good for developing high quality reports. They allow you to solve complex problems. However, in some cases, Reporting Services provide functionality that will help you to save money and let your developers pay more attention to your business problems than to implementing standard routine functions.
Do not forget that you can always outsource the development of complex reports to our team, who has extensive experience in both Crystal Reports and MS Reporting Services.
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