1215826 - How to deploy an application that uses Crystal Reports and Visual Studio .NET?

• How to deploy an application that uses Crystal Reports and Visual Studio .NET?

• Crystal Reports XI R2
• Crystal Reports 2008
• Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005
• Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2008
• Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010

• Crystal Reports runtimes are required on computers where a .NET application using Crystal Reports SDK is deployed and where there is no Crystal Reports designer installed
• There are three ways of deploying Crystal Reports .NET application.
  1. Server Install: Crystal Reports assemblies are deployed as a separate .msi file from the application files and .rpt files.
  2. Merge Modules: All the files including Crystal Reports assemblies are deployed as one merge module to the target machine
  3. Click Once: Applicable only for Windows Application. The application files and .rpt files are copied to a web server separately from the .NET Frameworks, which are also copied to the same web server.
• Documentation on how to create a deployment setup package using merge modules in Visual Studio is available here.
• The Crystal Reports runtimes are available here. For Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2010 check this.
• More about deployment can be found in Developer's Guide under Deployment Section as given below.

• Upgrade the Crystal Reports to latest patch.
• Before deploying Crystal Reports .Net application, the version of Crystal Reports being used with .NET application should be confirmed. The version of Crystal Reports assemblies in deployment machine should be same as that in the development machine. This avoids version related issues.　
•  Version of Crystal Reports dlls, referred by the application, can be verified from the following steps:
  1) In case of a web-application, go to the project's web.config file and check the Crystal assembly version under <assemblies> </assemblies>　tag.
  2) Go to C:\Windows\assembly folder and check the dll version of CrystalDecisions.CrystalReports.Engine.
  3) File Version* can be obtained by right clicking on the dll -> properties -> version tab.
• Check the supported platform guides for Crystal Reports from here.

runtimes, .net, deploy application, vs, dot net, cr4vs2010 , KBA , BI-DEV-NET-SDK , .NET SDK / COM SDK , How To