Crystal Reports VS Reporting service

Crystal Reports "Sucks''
Well, I'm in the “Crystal Sucks” crowd. It didn't used to suck but with the advent of .NET, things just went downhill. Actually, it did kind of suck even back in the day, there just weren't as many viable alternatives. IMHO, Crystal is so poor in just about every regard that it's not worth using. I'm increasingly becoming a fan of SQL Server Reporting Services and this book has done WONDERS for me in getting through the learning curve. I can't think of one single area Crystal makes a better choice than Reporting Services or ActiveReports or just about any other area. Deployment sucks, they run slow, they're painfully fragile, licensing takes 4 PhDs and JD to figure out. Then again, Report Writing in general is like total Sh1t duty in most cases. Glad I'm not just entering the business and getting stuck writing reports - it's definitely a boring endeavor and Crystal makes it even moreso.
As far as Crystal though - it's a good tool for doing stuff in house and getting info in a quck and dirty manner. The later versions are nightmares though and in every intelligible way that I can see, a move backwards. I mean, sure, you can claim you have "Strongly Typed Reports" but big deal when deployment is so sorry. The comment about it being fragile is probably the best way to phrase the current state of it -it takes NOTHING to break it. Look at the number of newsgroup posts on the 'Can't find Keycode32.dll' errors - I actually wrote an article on this because a lot of the documentation is wrong or points you to a different problem. And in the new VS.NET version - you don't even have design time preview, you have to add a viewew to your project, set the reportsource and open the form after the program is compiled.
Have you used the newer versions like the one that comes w/ .NET? Uhhhh. Crystal USED to be a cool product, but it went backward. Strongly Typed Reports are the upside, but you pay for that 'wonderful' benefit by losing preview ability and an IDE that you can navigate around easily. And deployment - uhhhhhh - it's like getting kicked right in the nuts every time you need to change the database or a table or whatever.Just got into SSRS myself. Bought the apress book and the wrox book. the apress book is good for our data analyst...the wrox book good for the coders. i hate crystal with a passion. I have written my own report engine on more than one occasion to avoid crystal. plus, could crystal be more freakin' expensive for the enterprise version? it makes pretty pictures! and the new one with .net...could they be more intent on not having you do anything outside of the GUI designer? The designer that sucks...

Crystal Reports clearly does "suck". There are countless features that are so mundane, common, and seemingly simple that it amazes me how futile the effort has been to implement them. Let me list just a few on my list:
* Sub-reports Within Sub-reports - This needs no further explanation. Without this ability a reporting engine is worthless.
* "Buggy" Can Grow Property - This needs to work better with fields below it. What is the point of allowing a field to grow if it is only going to grow all over the rest of your report? Not to mention that doesn't work well with subreports (seeing a trend yet?)
* Limited Support for Adhoc Queries - Ever try to use a custom SQL statement as your data source? Doesn't work so well. It seems Crystal would prefer that you create countless views on your server to accomplish even the simplest reporting tasks.
* Calculations On-the-Fly - Why can't I take a field from my data source and modify its appearance on the report? As an example, if I have a floating-point number that is returned from my query I would like to be able to format the number to the correct number of decimal places and add the '' on the report rather than in the query.

I've just all of the comments about Crystal Reports product above and, as someone who works with the product extensively I can see that people above clearly have not taking any training before using the product so that they could understand how to use it effectively. The wizards are used typically to create the report - you wouldn't use it to edit the report however, you would just, for example, add another column by simply dragging the database field into the details section. As for subreport within subreports - recursively allowing unlimited numbers of subreports is a sure way to cause problems - not to mention making your report impossible to follow by anyone other than the person who created it. I've never yet seen an instance where this was a must. If you are having troubles, stop beating your head against your monitor and get in touch with the Customer Support reps at Business Objects, they are well trained and capable of helping you either through their Answers-by-Email system or, for a small cost, over the phone. But the most important thing to do is to get some training with the product first. It will save you countless hours of hair-pulling.