Crystal Reports: What Are They?

As buying and having reporting software programs becomes a necessity for more and more businesses, Crystal Reports has become an oft used and popular phrase in the business world. Crystal Reports, which has been one of the first reporting software programs to hit the market, can be defined as a “business intelligence application used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources”. The main reason for the popularity of Crystal Reports has of course been the fact that it eliminates the need for a software developer or coder for creating reports from pages of raw data.

Crystal Reports, which is generally provided along with Microsoft’s Visual Studio lets you select specific rows and columns of data from your database and presents it in the form of a report with graphs, charts and tables using a graphical user interface. The program lets you create professional level presentation reports by offering a large number of advanced formatting and presentation options. Another major advantage is that once the data and the parameters have been defined, you can rerun the .net
eport as and when you want it. The report can be created in many different file formats ranging from text and PDF to Excel and CSV.

However, one major disadvantage of Crystal Reports is that while it supports almost all kinds of database formats, it does not support Microsoft Word or Power Point as a data source. This means that the user will need to be proficient with databases, something that most non technical managers are not. On the other hand, the software is quite difficult to use and one needs to go through a number of tutorials and samples to get the hang of it. So if you are looking for user friendly and simple .net
eporting software, then you might want to consider other options like the Windward reporting software because of its ease of use.

You can start using Wind ward’s reporting software instantly since it is extremely simple and works with Word, Excel and PowerPoint apart from the usual data sources. And the best part is that it provides you with just as many, if not more formatting and presenting options as Crystal Reports, thus letting you get more while putting in lesser time and effort. To know more about the Windward reporting engine, you can visit their site http://www.windwardreports.com.