New to VB .NET 2003 and Data Reports

thc1979 · January 5th, 2009, 04:40 PM

Hi there, I used to use VB3 and VB5 a lot but due to other work I have had a break from programming and thought I would try to get back into it. So I bought a copy of VB .NET 2003 Standard Edition.

To my surprise, I didn't get on too badly with it but when it came to setting up reports I have been stopped in my tracks! I am used to using Crystal Reports (in VB 3 and 5) and this used to be a fairly simple task. Now I cannot even find it in VB and am unsure as to whether or not I even have it!

All I want to be able to do it the same as I am used to: create the basic report and then send queries to it from VB. Is there some way of downloading this freely or perhaps there is a different program that is available to do a similar thing?

Any help would be greatfully appreciated!

Many thanks,
Tom.

dparsons · January 5th, 2009, 06:04 PM

I have never used just VB or C# so my experience on this is limited to Visual Studio 200X which does have Crystal support (for the life of me I can not find a supported features diagram on the MSDN >< ). Anyway. The sure fire way to figure out if you have Crystal support though is to go to Project -> Add New Item -> Crystal Report. (In Visual Studio 2003 this was found under the Utility folder so, I would imagine, it would be similar for VB 03).

hth
-Doug

thc1979 · January 5th, 2009, 06:13 PM

Many thanks Doug. It seems I do not have the Crystal Reports Editor, which seems a bit poor of Microsoft as this is a key tool for anyone developing database applications!

I am only trying to re-learn some of what I used to be able to do! Everything wants to be web-based now and it's slow-going getting used to that!

What language are you using?

Thanks again,
Tom.

dparsons · January 6th, 2009, 09:24 AM

I work in a predominantly C# shop although we do have a handful of VB.NET applications more so because they are using DNN then out of necessity.

Personally I prefer C# over VB.NET but for no other reason than the syntactical differences (I, like you, came from a VB 5/6 background so began my foray into .NET with VB but ultimately went over to C#).

-Doug