Crystal Reports is a business intelligence application used to design and generate reports from a wide range of data sources. Microsoft has bundled Crystal Report with its development tool Visual Studio, as a general purpose reporting tool.

Crystal Reports allows users to graphically select data sources and layout of report. From Database Expert, user can select and link data from a wide variety of data sources, like Oracle databases, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, file system information and Business Objects Enterprise business views. Selected fields can be placed on the report design surface. They can also be used in custom formulas, using either BASIC or Crystal's own syntax, which can then be placed on the design surface. Custom formulas can be evaluated almost for any field during report generation as specified by the report developer. Crystal Reports also supports sub-reports, graphing, and a limited amount of GIS functionality.

Many formatting options are available for both fields and formulae. These options can be applied absolutely or conditionally. The data can be grouped into bands, each of which can be split further and conditionally suppressed as needed.

Advantages of Crystal Reports:

• Rapid report development with the help of designer interface eases the manual work for the programmer.
• Extend to complicated reports with interactive charts and enhance the understanding of the business model.
• Report object model can interact with other controls on the ASP.NET Web form.
• Export reports into widely used formats like .pdf, .doc, .xls, .html and .rtf