Moving from Visual Studio 2008 Win Forms w Crystal Reports 2008 to Visual Studio 2013 Web Forms

[Former Member]

We have over 2000 reports written in Crystal Reports 2008 v12.0.  The reports are used in Visual Studio 2008 with a database connection to SQL Server using ADO.NET in a Windows Forms project.  We are working on a Visual Studio 2013 ASP.NET Web Forms project.  We need to use our current reports and integrate them into the new web project.  Should we attempt to do this with Crystal Reports 2008 or should we convert the reports to a later version of Crystal Reports?  Any recommendations and guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[DellSC · Accepted solution]

You don't have to upgrade your .rpt files.  However, you DO have to upgrade the SDK you're using since you're working in VS 2013 because the Crystal 2008 SDK will not work with VS 2013.

Go here http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-7824 to get the latest version of the SDK.  You'll download and install the latest "Install Executable" to get integration with VS.  The other installs on the same line are runtime installs for deploying your application.

Please note that the new SDK does NOT play well in VS when installed side-by-side with the old SDK.  So you'll have to do one of two things:

1.  Uninstall the old SDK from the development computer.  This means that you will not be able to update/fix your existing application.

2.  Create a VM that has VS 2013 and the new version of the SDK on it then do your development on this VM.

Other Notes:

1.  You MUST use the full version of whatever .NET Framework that you're targeting - NOT the "Client" framework.

2.  If  you're manually adding CrystalDecisions assembly references to your application and you're targeting .NET 4.0 or newer, there is a new property on the reference called "Embed Interop Types".  You need to make sure that you set this property to False.

-Dell

[former_member11696]

Hi Darren,

I moved your post to CR for .NET forums.

You should not have a problem with CR 2008 reports. Only issue is if using Ms SQL Server be sure to update them to use the SQLNCLI10 for SQL 2008 and SQLNCLI11 for SQL 2012.

Also it's been noted since SQL Server 2012 uses Connection Pooling you will want to move to ODBC or you will run out of connections. OLE DB does not release the connection, ODBC does.

Don

[former_member11696]

And in the CR forums click this link and look for Crystal Printing... Ludek and I posted 4 wiki's on using printers in CR.

http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports/content?filterID=contentstatus[published]~objecttype~ob...

Don