Brian Bischof, author of Crystal Reports .NET Programming, has posted a comparison of SQL Server Reporting Services and Crystal Reports:
During 2004, Microsoft grabbed the attention of the Visual Studio .NET community by announcing a new reporting product: SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS). Not only did they promise to give programmers a new reporting tool, but it was going to be free as well. Suddenly everyone was comparing Reporting Services to Crystal Reports – the report designer that has been bundled with VB since VB 3 and integrated into Visual Studio .Net (and will also be included in the next release of Visual Studio .Net 2005).
The goal of this paper is to illustrate differences between SSRS and the current version of Crystal Reports, Crystal Reports XI (version 11). Each product has its strengths and weaknesses and these are highlighted here. It’s important to evaluate each product and consider which one works best for your application’s reporting requirements.