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I am using ASP.NET MVC. Sometimes I work with ASP.NET Web Forms too. I can pretty much create my queries using stored procs or LINQ and render my report just using a plain HTML table. With proper styling it should come out decent.
I don't know SSRS but I have some experience working with crystal from before. The only advantage I see from using crystal for my reports against just a simple HTML table is that it can export to PDF. But I could probably get some third-party library that can do that too. Regarding charts like pie and bar graphs there are a lot of javascript tools available out there that does that and they're free.
I guess I'm posting this to see what I'm missing with reporting tools like Crystal and SSRS.
EDIT: With ASP.NET MVC it is not particularly difficult to create the report. Just formulate the correct model, create the controller action and view with scaffolding (Detail) and you will have the code generated for you right away. With ASP.NET Web Forms it is probably easier, just use a GridView and you're done. For both cases all that is left is the CSS. With Crystal you also need to edit the layout you have generated the report, which is work still as well.
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Crystal tends to be better at printing reports. The report size and margin settings can cause blank pages in SSRS. Reporting Services will not allow you to pass values from a sub-report to a main report, but it does enable you to nest sub-reports within other sub-reports.
As crystal reports are created in designer interface, less coding part is covered. Complex reports can be made interactive through chart view and hence make easy view of the business model. It can easily interact with other ASP.NET web form controls. No requirement for installing SQL server for creating reports.
Many organizations are still operating legacy versions of Crystal Reports, and there is a cost to upgrade to the most current version. And even once a company shells out the cost of the upgrade, there is work to be done.
To do the migration to SSRS, first we create a VS 2005 project, add the ReportViewer, and then add the dataset to be used by the converted SSRS report. We use Crystal Migration Services to convert Crystal Reports to SSRS rdl. Finally you will see the winform Crystal Reports project can be fully converted to SSRS.
The reason we use SSRS for our internal reports is that our database guy can create reports without having any knowledge of how to format output using code.
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The biggest reason for me to use a reporting engine is for printing and page breaks. You can't always guarantee the way the HTML will format for all the various browsers and it's not great for setting hard page breaks. With a reporting solution, you can group things together to force page breaks to be more predictable.
This is especially important if you're looking for a more professional looking report.
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