confused about crystal reports with .NET 2.0 and C#[need basicadvice]

[giddy]

hi,

I'm an MCP(70-536) so i know C# pretty well, the last app i made i had
to resort to using a hideously confusing design to print reports,
charts etc, and eventually it didn't work out well. So i'm guessing
crystal reports is the thing. However I haven't found any good
*light,quick* book and I'm not quite sure i can use crystall reports
with C#?? I have it installed with VS08 pro?

So instead could someone direct me to an article or a small quick book
and maybe some documentation and what I need to get just get started
quick, basically I'm in a big hurry to learn this for my next app and
I don't have much time.

Thanks so much
Gideon

 

[Jim Rand]

Take a look at Developer Express. The reporting is great - plus, it does
not rely on any COM objects - it's all C#

 

[Norman Yuan]

All versions of Visual Studio (.NET, 2002 to 2008) comes with a version of
CrystalReport, called CrystalReport.NET. Since VS2005, MS also includes its
own report tool for local report, or for SQL Server reporting services
report design (if you have SQL Server 2005 client tool installed).

Of course, there are quite some report tools from the Internet, free or not,
which are either stand-alone, or can work with VS together...

If you can do report for SQL Server reporting services, you need to install
report designer (Business Intelligence Project Studio, only available for
VS2005) from SQL Server 2005 client tool. If you just want to learn how to
do report with VS, simply start VB2008, select report project, than choose
either "Reports Application" or "CrystalReport Application". For the former,
you can only do fairly simple local report, not for SQL Server 2005
reporting services (you have to wait for SQL Server2008's release in order
to use VS2008 to do report for SQL Server reporting services). For the
latter, it is not as powerful as full CrystalReport product, but you can do
most common reporing stuff.

 

[giddy]

hi,

Thanks so much for your replies.


Ok, didn't know there were so many reporters availiable.

Back quite some time ago, to impress people at work i tried writing my
own classes to handle printing automatically and it drove me insane, I
just need something that will allow me to print to the printer bills,
invoices, etc from a Win forms app which uses an access database. The
data is usually just tabular and something a pie chart or graph.

Jim, is this what you were talking about??
http://demos.devexpress.com/XtraReportsDemos/ReportTypes/SideBySide.aspx

Is there something simpler, where I don't need much (or anything) on
the client machine. Also, I really hate VB.NET! i would really like it
if was thoroughly integrated into C#, like i could just send data to
it, and would like if i could directly connect it to query my database
and display a report.

Also i saw this:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb386063.aspx#report0702

Is that only for web apps, if it is'nt then could anyone point me to a
good article or something?

Thanks so much
Gideon