SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio – 2012 Support Update
On September 12, Microsoft launched Microsoft Visual Studio 2012. We’ve received a lot of interest already, so here are some details on how we will support this product.
Our development teams are hard at work updating SAP Crystal Reports to support Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5, with plans to make this update available in late Q1 2013. Dates are of course subject to change, based on product readiness.
You should note that support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 will be delivered in an upcoming service pack release, which can be applied to an installation of the current product (SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010).
To reflect support of this 2012 release, we will be renaming our product to SAP Crystal Reports, developer version for Microsoft Visual Studio. We are dropping the year from our naming convention, since the product will support multiple releases of VS. This allows us to update our offering more quickly as well as maintain fewer versions of the product. In turn, that should also make it less confusing for users to decide which version is needed.
In addition to supporting Microsoft Visual Studio 2012, the new release of SAP Crystal Reports will also add support for Windows 8. I’ll update this post closer to our release with specifics around platform support updates.
What about the SAP Crystal Reports Standalone Developer Edition NOT in Visual Studio?
Only SDK components are .NET Assemblies. What components are you looking for?
Any Dev tool/language capable of using them should work.
There are no direct Native WIN32 or COM components available any more.
Java is another option also.
I guess what I am wondering is if SAP will ever distribute a version of Crystal Reports Developer that is NOT bundled into Visual Studio?
We have always written reports with the Crystal Reports developer edition that was never a part of Visual Studio. The last version that was distributed was Crystal 2008. This is the version we still write our reports with. We are wondering if there will ever be a new version of Crystal Reports to develop with outside of Visual Studio?
Go to this page: http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports
Or when you start up Crystal 2008 the start screen shows you CR 2011, Click the link and you can get the latest version.
CR has always been bundled with VS, this page simply shows you the next version of the bundle.
Maybe I am missing something...
You say CR has always been bundled with VS, but our developers do not have VS. We've been using CR since V6.0 when owned by Seagate. We have upgraded the developer editions along the way (CR8, CR9 CRXI, and now CR2008).
I guess I am confused to always hear Crystal for Visual Studio when our developers do not have VS. When we open Crystal to write/edit reports, we open the Crsytal icon, not a Visual Studio icon.
Can you please clarify/comment on this? Thanks.
I've been supporting CR since version 4.6.
We have always had both versions. Standalone CR like you have and a simplified version embedded into VS.
So to clarify, the "Developer" version of CR was to include the SDK components for writing an application using CR runtime. For simply creating reports using the Report Designer it was not required. "Developer" meant writing an application and not "Developing Reports". There is no "Developer" version now, CR for VS 2010 is the Developer runtime for CR 2011. If you are not writing an application then you do not need CR for VS 2010 and simply need to update to CR 2011 for Developing and designing reports using the Standalone Report Designer.
CR 2011 does not come with the SDK components, they are separate downloads now, CR for VS 2010 is the Dev tool used. You can download the SDK for BI 4.0 also for Managed reports connecting to BI/BOE.
I hope that is clear now?
Yes, I think that helps. Please read to see if I have this correct:
What I was referring to as the Developer edition, is what you refer to as the Designer.
Many of our developers use the Designer to write/edit all of our Crystal Reports.
We do have a VB.NET app that uses the CR2008 SDK to run/generate the reports through our own non-VB.NET software application.
In order to stay up-to-date with Crystal as far as writing/maintaining our reports and then deploying to our clients:
We would upgrade our developers to CR2011.
We would update our VB.NET app to VS2010 (and then this 2012 when it is made available). And, use the properties/methods, etc. for VS2010 in our app to generate our reports.
We would then distribute, to our clients, our reports created in CR2011 as well as the VS2010 (and VS2012) runtime components. So when our VB.NET app is executed to generate the report, the Crystal Reports methods/properties version of the runtime components are the same as those in the VB.NET app used to run the reports we wrote in CR2011?
Thank you.
It has been almost 1.5 months since the original post. Would it be possible to get some kind of update? I know some folks who are likely going to make the switch to SSRS because there is no compatible CR product for 2012 and no real information on when one will be coming out. Some kind of ETA would really help out - even if it is something like "we hope to have it before the end of the year - subject to change".
Hi Brian, Tentative date is end of January 2013, but that can change. All depends on how well it all goes as well as all of the fixes currently tracked.
I'd like to clarify which SP Rebecca refers to when she says "You should note that support for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 will be delivered in an upcoming service pack release, which can be applied to an installation of the current product (SAP Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio 2010)." Is she talking about SP4 (13.0.4, already released) or SP5 (13.0.5)?
Thanks,
Sergei
Hi Sergei,
SP 5 will have VS 2010 support and 4.5 framework support.
N, yes. We always highly recommend that the version of the application runtime matches the version of the Report Designer. In this case CR for VS 2010/2012 ( SP 5 ) and CR 2011 SP 5. Even though any version CR Designer 9 and above can open reports created between 9 -> 2011. But the limits will be functionality, CR 9 doesn't have/support any new features added in later version which is why we recommended using the same verisons.
App.config or web.config has the CR assembly versions in it as well as when you distribute the app so that it uses what you developed in.
So in your case the reports do not need to be updated but the runtime and redist packages will need to be.
Hope that's all clear.
If you have any issues please post to http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports-for-visual-studio
Thanks again
Don
We need VS2012 support urgently but are not interested in Windows 8 nor .NET 4.5 (since it's not supported on Windows XP). This should be the situation for a lot of people. Could you perhaps make a prompt release for VS2012 (as I've seen people fix 99 % of this with a 5 minute MSI MS Orca hack) and fix .NET 4.5 and Windows 8 later?
I agree. I'm in the situation where we aren't planning on adding any windows 8 support for our product, but we would still like to move to visual studio 2012 asap. We can't until Crystal Reports supports it.
It's really a suprise, that there will be a Visual Studio 2012 ;-). The Developer Preview was release in June 2012...
It's a pitty, that you haven't made any experiences from the Visual Studio 2010 Release, where it also took very long 'til you released an appropriate version for it...
So - again - it's not possible to use the current version of VS due to the inability of SAP to release their products in time...
Thank for that.
Hi All,
It's not just a simple matter of packaging it up after changing a few parts or hacking the MSI. A New Framework version and an update to integration as well as our Developers are working with Microsoft Developers to resolve issues we've discovered in VS 2012 itself.
Please be patient, we are doing everything we can to make it available as soon as it's ready.
Don
Thanks a lot Don, for responding to all these questions. To confirm, we are on track to release Crystal Reports, version for Visual Studio (support for VS 2012) in early Q1. We had hoped to release before year end, but there were some delays that have prevented us from doing so. We are working diligently to get the product delivered as soon as possible, and will make every effort to get the update out early in the new year.
Dear Rebecca,
I have been using the Crystal Reports Merge Modules successfully with Visual Studio 2008 for several years now to support the many Crystal Reports templates I've built for a client.
For various reasons I now need to upgrade to Visual Studio 2012. Reading through the many comments above I am unclear as to whether the Crystal Reports functionality in my web application will be supported from what will soon be my VS2012 web application.
Note: In my case I've built my own reporting module which simply makes calls to your various DLLs. The pertinent References in my Web project are these:
No new report templates are ever created by the user. My module simply generates reports based on the existing templates and what data is currently in SQL Server.
So I'm wondering if you could give me some guidance about whether VS2012 will just "work" with the VS2008 Merge Modules or whether problems will arise?
Any insight you could provide would be MUCH appreciated,
Robert Werner
Vancouver, BC
Hi Robert,
We will have support for VS 2012 in our next release of Crystal Reports , version for Visual Studio, which is timed for Q1. The feedback from our product team is that when you go through this upgrade, there shouldn’t be a need to change your reports when you migrate to 2012.
Let me know if you have other questions around the release. I should have more specifics on timing early in the new year.
Rebecca
Rebecca,
Thank you for responding! Since I posted my initial query to you, I've done a lot of work on my own and found an upgrade path for developers moving from VS2008 to VS2012. I've posted it on the ASP.Net site and cross-posted elsewhere on your website: http://forums.asp.net/t/1869063.aspx/1?Problems+with+Crystal+Reports+when+Upgrading+from+VS2008+to+VS2012
There is that little "trick" to perform because Visual Studio will alter the "######.Designer.cs" files to something full of code; and unfortunately code that conflicts with all the other similarly named files. While I'm sure there's some way to edit each file individually to "correctly" solve the problems, time is money, and my way was much simpler.
This solution is perfect for developers like me who have prepared dozens, if not hundreds of report templates, in the past and rarely, if ever, need to create a new one. And if my client ever requested an additional template, I could always prepare it in VS2008 and then transfer it over to VS2012. Not really a big hassle at all.
I hope this gives other people in my situation confidence that they can indeed keep on using Crystal Reports in VS2012 ... even before your next release is ready.
Robert Werner
P.S. Now can you do something about changing the constant rain here in Vancouver?! 🙂
Hello, I just finished moving my solution to vs 2012 and I expect to be able to convert my RPT files ... In the meantime, Is there a solution that would use the engine of CLR4 just to run and deploy the application ? thank you in advance, Regards,
François, I don't work for SAP but am just a fellow developer like yourself. I'd like to help if I can but you weren't specific enough with your question. What type of "solution" are you looking for? What type of application are you building? What language is it written in?
P.S. As an addendum to my earlier post I must add that my ASP.NET / C# / .NET 4.0 app works great with the CR 13.02 Merge Modules except for one thing: The @FILENAME value is displaying differently than it did with ASP.NET 3.5 and is unacceptable at the moment.
Service Pack 5 was just released today.....
Please upgrade and test again.
Don
Robert, WinForms based solution in C#... Exception on ReportDocument.SetDataSource(myDataSet) method invoke.
This is for supportability and Platform info, PLEASE post your questions/issues to the Forums.
Downloads - http://scn.sap.com/docs/DOC-27917
Post to:
http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports-for-visual-studio/content
Great !
Still needing this badly. Any update on release date?
What do you need badly? SP 5 has been released....
http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports-for-visual-studio
Don
Hi Don,
I had been checking this thread since it stated "I'll update this post closer to our release with specifics around platform support updates" and never saw anything about the release. However I did run into it accidentally after I posted. I'm now muddling through issues with 32/64 bitness and differences between vs2010/vs2012 and x86/x64/AnyCpu when deploying applications. Seemed to be working with vs2012/AnyCpu from 64bit Win7 dev machine to 64bit Server2012/IIS 8 until I ran a report with a slow query and then killed the app pool or something. If I continue to have problems what is the appropriate forum to post in?
Tx!
All SDK .NET posts are here:
http://scn.sap.com/community/crystal-reports-for-visual-studio/content#filterID=content~objecttype~objecttype%5Bthread%5D
Hi,
do you know the release date of Service Pack 6?
Best Daniel