There are times in a developer’s life when you get to use great new tools.  Recently, at a client site, I was asked to create a few web based reports that would fit into the application that I was working on.  I was given my options; create them using a repeater control, Crystal Reports or Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS).

Each of these comes with their own benefits and detractions straight from the top. 

The repeater control is easy to get the data formatted, but getting the pages to break in the correct spot is notoriously painful.

Crystal Reports is standard, a little painful, but easy to develop.  However, in production there would have been some licensing difficulties.  I was “encouraged” to not use Crystal.

SSRS are great when they are installed on a SQL Server.  However, this client did not have them installed and had no intention of installing them on the SQL Server 2000 database that the application would run upon. Plans to add a SQL Server 2005 instance were in the plans, but not until after this application needed released.

SSRS was the preferred option, not only by the client, but by me as well. Then the dilemma struck me, I had never used SSRS locally. Thus began my local SSRS adventure.