I have been migrating Crystal reports to SSRS for about six years. There are many subtle differences between the two products but generally speaking, Reporting Services can do most anything the Crystal can. In most cases, the report design techniques
will be similar and in some cases, they will be different.
Reporting Services includes a number of exclusive features but the few things that SSRS does not handle liek Crystal in report design includes federating data from multiple result sets into a single data region. For this, you would use a linked server
or parameterized subreport in SSRS. SAP also has the Business Objects Universe metadata layer, which is a very mature data abstraction technology. Microsoft's data models semantic layer is not quite so far along but is easily replaced by relational
views and OLAP cubes. When considering platform integration, licensing cost and TCO; Microsoft wins hands-down. By comparison, the SAP/BO/Crystal licensing model is very expensive.
Hitachi Consulting has developed a tool that we use to help our clients migrate Crystal rpt files to rdl. It's not always and exact science but can save a lot of time and effort for most report styles.
Paul Turley, MVP [Hitachi Consulting] SQLServerBIBlog.com
