From part 1 of this article, you got list of steps in order to deploy Crystal Reports 2008 project created in Visual Studio 2008.

Next step is to choose deployment strategy, prepare installation script and then install it on IIS server.
There is enough written about deployment process from within Visual Studio so let’s give some people credit for their work - for example, please check this article – I am going to use it as a base.

All things considered there is still a variation to that process specific to Crystal Reports.

Note: Make sure you have latest runtime available for you – visit SAP download page - as of 10/19/2009 runtime version available is 12.2 .

Preparing the installation

Deploying standalone .Net application should not be a problem using standard procedure, but with ASP.Net application some problems may arise…

Lets go with Windows Installer approach.

One thing to add to the steps presented in the article above – ensure proper Crystal Report run-time is installed.

If you have followed steps from part 1 of this article, you now have proper version of runtime installed in VS2008.

After you have created your Web-Setup project and followed all the steps, go to project properties and click Prerequisites. What you need to look for here is two lines:

• Crystal Reports Basic for Visual Studio 2008
• Crystal Reports 2008

We are interested in the second option.
Please notice, this would mean (in default scenario) that during installation your setup would attempt to download redistribution package from SAP web-site.

Build, copy, install…

Installation notes

Note: Steps below are based off IIS 6 installation of ASP.Net project.

Deployment packages are copied and installed… Everything is nice and installation seems to be successful.
Trying access a new web-site… and… worse case scenario… error 404 - page not found… O-oh…

From IIS log you may notice something like this at the end of the log record - 404 2 1260.

Please do the following:

• Open IIS Management console
• Navigate to Web Service Extension node
• Make sure that ASP.Net 2.0.50727 (or similar) is enabled
• Keep IIS Manager opened for now.

So your page is back, but where you should see your CrystalReportViewer control there is nothing. Most likely there would an JS error detected on the page “bobj is undefined”.
You would need to check that there is “crystalreportviewer12” virtual folder is present in your site tree. In most cases it should be there, since it is part of CR redistribution package logic. If you have not included it with your setup and/or installed CR support through different means, then you would need to add this virtual folder yourself.

And validate folder created

Another way if you share CR installation between different sites would be to use Export/Import folder info functionality to copy VF info between sites.

Hopefully by that point your CR based web-site should be up and running.

This is a first part of the discussion about what it takes to deploy Crystal Reports 2008 based project created in Visual Studio.

Dependencies

When you develop something which involves Crystal Reports you need to deploy CR 2008 run-time along with your project.

As you know by now, Visual Studio 2008 comes with Crystal Reports 2008 Basic included, which is really a CR v. 10. But if you have Crystal Reports 2008 installed on-top of it, you need to worry about CR v.12.

IMPORTANT. Do not confuse two!

When you deploy your Visual Studio 2008 project you need to use appropriate MSI – either one included with VS or an updated CR 2008 run-time provided by SAP (a new home for Crystal Reports).

So, where is it?

Before you rash digging SAP web-site, let’s examine your local drive. There is a nice place there

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\

1. If you did not install regular CR 2008, you would find only one folder for your CR:
   

   C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\CrystalReports10_5\

   and this is where you want to grab distribution package from (64 or 32 bit).
    

2. Otherwise, even though there is
   

   C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Bootstrapper\Packages\CrystalReports 12.0\

   folder, it may not be much of help since there is no actual files.
   Do not worry. Check product.xml there. It would tell you few things you need: a) location/URL of MSI you need, and b) required related products – MS .Net Framework 2.0 and Microsoft.Data.Access.Components.2.8.

Now we good to go with the next step.

Note: Make sure you have latest runtime available for you – visit SAP download page.