Free Visual Studio designer that can be used in enterprise organisations

BlueInTheSky

Hi All,

in the Claus L.'s post https://clauslblog.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/free-visual-studio-designer-for-nav-2015-and-nav-2013-r2/
he tells about Microsoft Visual Studio Community 2013 as a free alternative to Visual Studio for Designing Reports more comfortabe than with Report Builder.
But there is also the comment:
"... In enterprise organizations (meaning those with > 250 PCs or < $1 Million US Dollars in anual revenue), no use is permitted beyond the open source, avademic research, and classroom learning environment scenarios ..."

So in the comments Ulli Richard is telling about an alternative, which should be also usable in the enterprise organisations:
"You need to download and install

1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Shell (Isolated) Redistributable Package
http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=40764

2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Shell (Integrated) Redistributable Package
http://www.microsoft.com/en-US/download/details.aspx?id=40777

3. Visual Studio Express 2013 with Update 5 for Web
https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=532503&type=WEB&clcid=0x409&quot;

Does anybody here have experience with that alternative ? Does it work and can be used for example on a client server ?

Thanks for any hints!

Regards, Blue

postsaurav

Hi Blue,

All is true but on top of it Microsoft is not providing Licensing for Visual Studio 2013.

Report Builder works Same as Visual Studio, and I find its good. Its Free, Comes with Navision Installer and have most of the features with Visual Studio.

EvR

I've never understood people who insisted they needed visual studio to design rdlc layouts. I've heard it so many times. But no one has ever been able to explain to me why they needed it over the sql report designer.
Anyone?

BlueInTheSky

postsaurav wrote: »

Hi Blue,

All is true but on top of it Microsoft is not providing Licensing for Visual Studio 2013.

Report Builder works Same as Visual Studio, and I find its good. Its Free, Comes with Navision Installer and have most of the features with Visual Studio.

Thank you for your feedback.
What do you mean by "Microsoft is not providing Licensing for Visual Studio 2013" ?

So is it possible to use
1. Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Shell (Isolated) Redistributable Package
2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 Shell (Integrated) Redistributable Package
3. Visual Studio Express 2013 with Update 5 for Web
as free alternative in enterprise organizations ?

I personally havn't worked so much with Report Builder and have used Visual Studio Professional instead.
But what I don't like in Report Builder for example is, that you don't have a list of the controls, that you can use to find and select a special control. This is especially usefull, when controls overlay other controls or you want to edit a control, where you don't know where it is, but where you know what's it's name.
Also some features for formatting are missing in Report Builder.

Regards, Blue