Crystal Report is an excellent reporting tool, that has been around forever. It's generally simple to use, for anyone that has basic understanding of how to connect to a database and query a result, and has a rich set of controls and features built into the product. An expansive COM object model allows you to do most anything with it at runtime (such as launching it from a VB application, or even creating reports at runtime). But it does have one huge drawback -- watch out for those licensing fees -- there's a 'gotcha' every which way you turn. And it can get pretty expensive! In reality, the pricing shown on vbxtras should say "from $xxx to infinity." If you're going to become an OEM provider, or use their Enterprise/Embedded editions, you need to read the fine print before you continue. Before you ship out your reports to a customer, you need to know whether they'll be running those reports on a Citrix server, for instance -- otherwise, be prepared to tell your customer they must pays royalties back to Crystal every year. All in all, I'd recommend the product as an overall excellent reporting tool.
AndrewAllen, 6/22/2005 8:58:44 PM
Didn't Like crystal reports at all. It is not very WYSIWYG when doing very small fonts. Difficult to place bold text and italics etc inside a frame that has a lot of writing in it.
It is virtually impossible to run on a virtual server that is being hosted by an ISP as you have to register the licence keys onto the server. None of the ISP's I spoke to (Including the larger companies) would allow the setup package to be run on their server.
I definitely DON'T recommend this program.
Graeme
New Zealand
ShaunHayward, 8/30/2005 11:43:36 AM
Crystal Reports was very good a very long time ago. Version 6 was the beginning of what I like to call "Living Hell" for developers.
The tool isn't all that bad at first glance... but it has SO many problems. You can't copy and paste multiple items, it's next to impossible to line things up just right (event zooming into 400% and beyond), snap to grid doesn't always snap to the grid, and heaven help you when go to deploy it. Your reports won't run on 20+ percent of the machines to which you deploy it.
Don't get me wrong, Crystal Reports works really well. The only major problems it has are creating, modifying, compiling, distributing, running, viewing, and printing reports. Other than that, it works GREAT!
The handwriting is on the wall. Active Reports and XtraReports are selling like hot-cakes at major component vendors. Crystal Reports doesn't even make the top 500. There are lots of installs out there and some poor folks crazy enough to upgrade to a newer version but far too many of us have been burned, annoyed, angered, and made insane far too many times.
The only thing keeping it alive is Microsoft's decision to partner. Even they can't get it debugged well enough to work 100% (or even 80%).
4 Review(s) have been written.
