What are the major differences between Crystal and SQL reporting services?

Ease of hosting reports: - Using the URL technology in RS we can host reports more easily than in crystal report where we need to make a UI for the same.

Supporting platforms: - Crystal can run on windows, IBM and sun while RS (reporting services) can run only on windows environment.

Client tools: - In reporting services we have Business intelligence ( BI ) and development studio while in crystal its Report designer.

Caching: - This achieved in crystal by using cache server while in reporting services it's stored as snapshots in Reportserver database.

Export formats:- In crystal we have HTML,PDF,Excel,XML,Word , PDF , RTF , CSV, text files while in SQL Server 2005 we have all the formats above it also gives capability to extend custom reporting formats.

Data sources:- Crystal support more data sources while RS only supports Microsoft and oracle data sources. Crystal supports ADO, COM, Database excel Access, Exchange, NT, Xbase, JDBC, File system and Paradox. RS supports only SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC, OLEDB and you can also extend additional data sources which does not exists in crystal reports.

Version issues: - One of the main issues faced in crystal is it have different versions which makes it difficult to use, while RS comes with SQL Server minimizing the version issue.

Web server support: - Crystal can run on IIS 5/6, Apache, lotus etc while RS works only with IIS 5.0 and above.