Skip to content
Compare and migrate

Forma beside DevExpress’s own AI, and moving reports in.

Forma writes DevExpress reports, so the honest comparison is with DevExpress’s own AI features, and the useful question is how to bring reports from another tool. Both answers, with links to DevExpress’s own pages.

Last reviewed 9 November 2026

DevExpress’s AI-powered extensions

DevExpress Reporting has its own AI features in its designers, among them Prompt-to-Report (a report from a description, still a preview) and an expression written from a sentence. Its documentation lists two things they need: an active DevExpress subscription, and an account with an AI service of your choosing, such as OpenAI, Azure OpenAI or a self-hosted Ollama. DevExpress: AI-powered extensions

Where Forma differs

  • Free, and in a browser. No subscription and nothing to install; a free Gemini key, a local AI or OpenRouter’s free models.
  • From what you already have. A screenshot, a scan, a PDF or a .repx, read with OCR in your browser, as well as a description.
  • Checked as DevExpress prints. A Preview that pages the report as DevExpress does, exports, and an audit for what the designer would drop.
  • Your SQL Server database without a connection. DevExpress’s Data Source Wizard connects to the server; Forma reads its layout from a read-only script you run, writes DevExpress’s own SQL data source by connection name, and checks a report against a newer export. How
  • Not a designer. Forma writes the .repx; DevExpress’s designer is still where a report is finished, and its subscription is still what runs it in your application.

Moving reports from Crystal Reports or SSRS

DevExpress publishes a free tool for this: Reporting.Import, open source under the MIT licence, a console program that converts Crystal Reports (.rpt) and SQL Server Reporting Services (RDL, RDLC) reports into .repx files. It needs the other tool’s own libraries installed, and says plainly that not everything converts. DevExpress/Reporting.Import on GitHub

The two fit together: convert with Reporting.Import, then bring the .repx to Forma to tidy it, check it in the Preview and the audit, and ask for what the conversion missed. For a report you only have as paper or a PDF, Forma alone is the way in, and Batch takes a whole folder.