Will the real Crystal Reports 2008 stand up?

After looking at Business Objects' Webpage about Crystal Reports 2008 for Visual Studio, you may conclude that the version included in Visual Studio 2008 is a "light" version of CR 2008.
http://www.businessobjects.com/product/catalog/crystalreports_visualstudio/

Well, not exactly.  Here are the CR 2008 Basic DLLs. Note the version?  Yep, that's 10.x

Here are the CR 2008 Full version DLLs. Note the version?  Yep, that's 12!

So CR 2008 Basic, the version bundled with Visual Studio 2008, is not a scaled down or a light version of CR 2008.  A quick call to Business Objects confirmed this.  They said that it was version 10 along with some version 11 enhancements.  IMHO, this will create a lot of confusion.  They should have used a different name.

Now that Crystal Reports 2008 SP0 provide support for Visual Studio 2008, I installed it.  Here's a screenshot of the setup process.  Note that they kept the same product name as the one used in Visual Studio.

I was told (but did not test) that if you already installed CR 2008 Basic as part of the Visual Studio 2008 installation and you install Crystal Reports 2008, the Setup will upgrade your files from 10.x to version 12.  There's no side by side installation possible.

Since it was impossible to move reports files from CR 2008 Basic to pre CR 2008 SP0, I wanted to test if they fixed that with SP0.  Yep, it now works.

6 Comments

  • I'm more a part of the "wishing it would lie down and die" group
    :P


  • Re: your comment that "They should have used a different name." and "Note that they kept the same product name as the one used in Visual Studio."

    We did use a different name for the clearly different products - you're misquoting the product names it in this post.

    The components in VS 2008 are clearly named "Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008".

    The full product is called "Crystal Reports 2008".

    Care to correct that oversight?

  • My environment is:

    Windows Vista Ultimate 32bit and 64bit

    Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

    CR 2008 Developer Edition v12.0.0.683 Product Type: Full

    Here is what I tried to get CR 2008 Developer Edition to work with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition.



    Scenario #1

    1) Loaded Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit Service pack and run all updates.

    2) Load Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

    3) Open Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and try adding a report to a project and the wizard for data source comes up and it works fine before adding CR 2008 Developer Edition

    4) Load CR 2008 Developer Edition

    5) Install CR 2008 Developer Edition SP01

    6) Open Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and try adding a report to a project and it comes with no page and no wizard for data source. Also none of the CR Controls in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition work they are all grayed out. The CR Report file is basically useless because you cannot do anything with it.



    Scenario #2

    1) Loaded Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit Service pack and run all updates.

    2) Load CR 2008 Developer Edition

    3) Load Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

    4) Install CR 2008 Developer Edition SP01

    5) Open Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and try adding a report to a project and it comes with no page and no wizard for data source. Also none of the CR Controls in Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition work they are all grayed out. The CR Report file is basically useless because you cannot do anything with it.



    Scenario #3

    1) Loaded Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit Service pack and run all updates.

    2) Load CR 2008 Developer Edition

    3) Install CR 2008 Developer Edition SP01

    4) Load Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

    5) Open Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and try adding a report to a project and the wizard for data source comes up and it works fine because CR 2008 Developer Edition is not seen since it was loaded and updated prior to installing Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition.



    Scenario #4

    1) Loaded Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit Service pack and run all updates.

    2) Load CR 2008 Developer Edition

    3) Load Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition with out Crystal Reports 2008 (v10) Basic

    4) Install CR 2008 Developer Edition SP01

    5) Open Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and try adding a report to a project and the wizard for data source comes up and it works fine because CR 2008 Developer Edition is not seen since it was loaded and updated prior to installing Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition



    Scenario #5

    1) Loaded Windows Vista 32bit and 64bit Service pack and run all updates.

    2) Load Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition with out Crystal Reports 2008 (v10) Basic

    3) Load CR 2008 Developer Edition

    4) Install CR 2008 Developer Edition SP01

    5) Open Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition and try adding a report to a project and the wizard for data source comes up and it works fine because CR 2008 Developer Edition is not seen since it was loaded and updated prior to installing Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition



    I know there was another scenario of me installing these two things but you get my point no matter what you do CR 2008 Developer Edition does not work with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition given my system setup. After two days of going back and forth I started looking at Microsoft reporting tools and other ways to do reporting. I have used Crystal Reports since almost its first release. I am just getting tired of the hoops you have to jump through everytime a new version of Visual Studios comes out to make it work right. I wish they would test and give detailed instructions on how to install because it does not work right or at all.

  • I really think Microsoft needs to find another long term partner for reporting in Visual Studio. Since SAP purchased Business Obj and Crystal, the support and information are going down hill quickly. This should be a seamless integrated package included with VS. It's always been alittle quirky, but at least there were tons of support sites and options. Now SAP has hidden all access to support and downloads of merge modules etc.

  • Hi,

    I've recently installed the trial version of Crystal Report 2008. I've created a report and linked it with visual studio 2008. I got the windows to convert the solution.
    In my config file, all the assemblies for CR are using the version 12.0.2000.0.
    When I convert my report as a pdf from my VS application and open the pdf file created, It doesn't look like crystal report 2008 (full version) has been used. (the conversion of the font I'm using shows that's it's still using an older version of CR as when I convert it from CR 2008 directly, the font displays perfectly).
    Not sure why it's doing this.
    This is what I have in the aspx page:



    Any ideas of what I might have forgotten?

    Thanks

  • Problem to drill down crystal report 2008 in Vs 2005 and VS 2008

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