Hi All,
Has anyone found a replacement program that is an alternative to Report Builder?
Every time I need to modify a more complex report, like PackSlip, I’m reminded how cumbersome the tool is. I’m sure it’s probably just me but I’m hoping that someone created a better alternative to Report Builder.
I did a search and found a couple of possibilities but I’m waiting for a sales call to see if it really works like they describe. In the meantime, I figured I would ask this group.
Report Builder or SSRS?
It’s not SSRS Report Builder so much as the horrible stock templates. It’s usually far easier to wipe out everything except the datasets and build the user-facing part from scratch. At that point, it’s usually simple to make further changes.
Also, and let’s be honest, the canned reports are fugly in the extreme in addition to being unmaintainable.
I didn’t even know other tools existed besides using visual studio to develop a report.
Reporting Services for Visual Studio is pretty much Report Builder. I’d argue it’s not better at building reports, though it’s VASTLY easier to manage deployment.
I assume that when Epicor switched from Crystal to SSRS, they ran some kind of automatic conversion tool on the reports. Things that would naturally be tables were converted to grids of individual elements.
The archived rants on MSDN Social are good reading. A lot of people really, really hate Report Builder.
Visual Studio is definitely a lot better on building complex report.
You can locate all the objects on the report from the drop down, while report builder is very simple and easy to use.
Thanks All.
As I’m searching, I came across SQL Server Data Tools, which I think is in line to what people are referring to when they say Visual Studio.
We are on E10.2 with SQL 2014 (working to upgrade this year). Does anyone know if there is a versioning issue or does the latest version of SQL Server Data Tools work for all versions?
I don’t know about the versioning, but, the problem with SSDT/VS is you have to make a separate solution for each report to get them into the right subfolders. Very annoying.
Yeah…I don’t follow the ridiculous way the stock reports are managed. I’ve got a single custom folder sitting inside the DB instance (alongside the canned “reports” folder) so patches don’t ever touch anything. Within Custom are a half dozen subfolders broadly categorized around business units. As such, I only have a handful of solutions in my SSRS project.
Yeah that’s fine if its set up that way from the beginning - in my situation there were already hundreds of custom reports created according to the Epicor defaults (one subfolder per report) so it was impossible.
Microsoft Visual Studio Tools for Applications 2015
I can’t get the reports to open in Visual Studio version above this.
FYI
Ben