Best report generator?

[BrianHawley]

Is the verdict in yet on the best report generator to use with .NET?

I started with Crystal Pro with VB6 and used it for a few years before figuring out that Data Dynamics had much better export perfomance and could export to almost anything.

Anxious not to make the same expensive mistake with C#. Any impartial info on the relative merits gratefully received.

[mendhak]

Got money? Crystal Reports.
Want something free and are willing to put up with a few headaches at times? MS SQL Server Reporting Services.

[BrianHawley]

Got money? Crystal Reports.
Want something free and are willing to put up with a few headaches at times? MS SQL Server Reporting Services.

Company's paying, so not a huge deal.

Does Crystal for .NET export well to pdf, Excel etc? That's something we really need and the old Crystal for VB6 (last version was 8 I think) never could hack it. No pdf and the Excel was rubbish. Nice in many other ways though.

[mendhak]

Yes. If I'm not mistaken, you get a trial/limited version of CR with Visual Studio 2003... but yes, I believe it does export to PDF and Excel.

SQL Server Reporting services does, too, btw. There are a few bugs you might face in the case of multilingual applications with it though, such as DBCS in PDF... it just doesn't show.

[BrianHawley]

Thanks for the info.

Guess I'll get trial versions of each and try them out.