Crystal Reports vs Report Builder
Ed Dressel
Report Builder Enterprise, but not Crystal Reports.
Marketing is demanding CR, and engineering is not as interested.
Thanks
Ed Dressel
John Pierce
kind of an *industry standard*, so you can expect someone to be at least
somewhat familiar with it at most sites. We use it with Oracle, with
which it works well, though it does not support O8 specific features.
It comes with a Delphi component which allows you to run existing
reports from within Delphi, and to vary the *with* and *order by*
clauses of existing reports, but the full version of Crystal is required
to create new reports. The 'text object', which is used for putting
plain text into reports was a disaster in Crystal < 8, but is said to
have been fixed in 8. Eventually, you can write any report in it, but
you have to learn to use it.
John
Theo Pistorius
Mmmmmm, Crystal is very powerful but can be slow at times. Also.... and
this has been my experience with version 7 that the answers are not very
consistant. For example you might get two different totals using exactly
the same report on exactly the same data. Users often dream of "creating
their own reports" this is almost a joke. The learning curve is steep. I
would stay away from Crystal if I was you. Again this is VERY SUBJECTIVE.
2. Any other third party installation that also uses Crystal will without
any warning overwrite your version and all of a sudden your reports don't
work any more.
3. It is a real bitch to distribute, ships with tons of DLL files and what
not.
Theo
Bernd Maierhofer
with an application. If you need one reporting tool to support data in a
database, regardless of the applications --> CR. If you need a reporting
tool to be integradted in an application --> RB.
HTH
dato Denkwerkzeuge - Bernd Maierhofer
Corneliusgasse 4/5
A-1060 Wien , Austria
sup...@dato.at
Andy Vines
version with dBase. Now on version 7.
Its very good for creating quick simple reports, I use it for
Invoices, Purchase orders and all the docs in a stock control system.
It can do some very clever things but the help file in my opion is
rubbish, loads of missing links and does not really explain some of
the features, the runtime files are quite large but easy to distribute
(I cheat by distributing a compiled report which automatically
distributes the runtime files and then delete the compiled report at
the end of my setup program).
Dealings with crystal support is sometimes slow, but generally they
will answer your question but not always end up fixing a problem,
recently had a problem where it will not print any special symbols eg.
Euro symbol, ended up being told that it could not do it neither could
version 8.
Overall I find it good for somethings but not for others, I have got
used to it over the years and find out more usefull stuff all of the
time, have looked around myself for an alternative but I have not
found anything else apart from Report Builder.
I will stick with crystal for the moment because I have some users who
only have compiled reports with no access to the main application.
On the plus side it has been very stable when running, and the
sub-reports work well (once you have figured out how to use them).
Overall good program crap help file.
Andy Vines
Ed Dressel <E...@brandentech.com> wrote in message
news:38E3B16E...@brandentech.com...
Sean McCall
My experience with Crystal stopped at V5 when I became fed up with
exactly the same issues Theo mentioned. I don't know if it got better,
but in V5 the VCL component was so bad that I needed to write my own to
be able to properly control the report engine when using subreports.
Crystal is powerful, but it is also very slow. We have also had problems
with newer versions of Crystal being loaded and stopping our program
from running. I have just started working with ReportBuilder and am
pleased so far. The only real advantage I have found so far to Crystal
is that it will automatically sort the data for your groups. You need to
present your dataset to ReportBuilder sorted correctly. If you use SQL,
this really isn't much of a problem. I can't even begin to say how nice
it is to be able to control the report engine from code. On top of that,
the source code is included.
Good luck,
Sean
Theo Pistorius wrote:
>
> Ed
> Mmmmmm, Crystal is very powerful but can be slow at times. Also.... and
> this has been my experience with version 7 that the answers are not very
> consistant. For example you might get two different totals using exactly
> the same report on exactly the same data. Users often dream of "creating
> their own reports" this is almost a joke. The learning curve is steep. I
> would stay away from Crystal if I was you. Again this is VERY SUBJECTIVE.
> 2. Any other third party installation that also uses Crystal will without
> any warning overwrite your version and all of a sudden your reports don't
> work any more.
> 3. It is a real bitch to distribute, ships with tons of DLL files and what
> not.
> Theo
>
> Ed Dressel wrote:
>
L. S. Lichtmann
their attitude.
The people who have already replied have things pretty straight, in my
opinion. I loathe Crystal's designer with a pure passion, and because of
its architecture and the fact that it is an "industry standard", if you go
with it you will go immediately and directly to Version Hell, Do Not Pass
Go, Do Not Collect $200. I don't use Report Builder (I use Nevrona's
ReportPrinter Pro, which has some unique characteristics that make it, for
my money, the best extant report writer) but they have a LOT of happy
customers, and anything would be a better than Crystal. The only reason
for going with Crystal is if there is some overwhelming reason why you
absolutely have to have a stand-alone reporting tool.
Gene
and it uses Basic as the macro language, just like Crystal Reports, but is
far easier and snappier to use. I have used Access2,95 &97 and have like
its report designer interface. Access can interface with your database if
it has an ODBC driver, just like that for Crystal reports. Before I
switched to Nevrona's Report Printer Pro, I had used MS Access via OLE
Automation from Delphi for report generation.
Good luck.
Gene
Ed Dressel wrote in message <38E3B16E...@brandentech.com>...
Steve Mullarkey
>The people who have already replied have things pretty straight, in my
>opinion. I loathe Crystal's designer with a pure passion,
I tend to agree but our customers all want Web Enabled Reporting and the
new Crystal 8 seems way ahead of any other report generator in this area.
Is there anybody out there would like to convinve me otherwise ? I'd be
glad to hear I can do the same in a Borland based product. Unfortunately
not Report Builder as we use BCB and there is no supported version for us
poor "C++_ophites" !
Steve Mullarkey
Tascom Pty Ltd.
Ed Dressel
> Is there anybody out there would like to convinve me otherwise ? I'd be
> glad to hear I can do the same in a Borland based product. Unfortunately
> not Report Builder as we use BCB and there is no supported version for us
> poor "C++_ophites" !
>
I wrote an ISAPI Dll useing ReportBuilder Pro that returns a report stream
based on criteria that the user has selected in an HTML page. It is pretty
slick. If my company drops it, I have asked for it--I think I could easily
market it as a stand alone solution.
BTW, I believe there is a version of RBP that does work with C++, ask in DM's
news group.
Ed Dressel
Denis Pyr
they just propose a solution developed by one of their customers - no
support no nothing.
On Mon, 03 Apr 2000 09:25:43 -0700, Ed Dressel <E...@brandentech.com>
wrote:
CHAD FAHEY
I was hunting around the Borland Delphi Newsgroup list for an answer to a
question that has been perplexing me. I am trying to use Crystal Reports
Version 6 with Delphi Version 5. I have tried to follow all of the instructions
from both Crystal Reports and Delphi, but I cannot seem to get it to work. I
have one icon (CrystalReports) on the component pallette under the Crystal
Report page that I created but I cannot get any other icons to appear (Should
there be more?). I got the first component to appear by installing the 'Crystal
Report Control (Version 5.2) ' from the Install ActiveX Control under the
Component tab in Delphi. There is a second Crystal Reports entry on the Import
ActiveX list, 'Crystal Report Design Time Control', but I cannot get this one to
install (I have a feeling this is where the rest of my icons are, if there
should be more...). When I try to install the second one, I get the following
error: "Error Loading Type Library/DLL An error occured while referencing a
user defined type. This may be caused by a missing or unregistered type
library." It does not tell me which DLL is missing, which makes it hard to pin
point the exact problem and fix it.
I have just started using both Delphi and Crystal Reports, so I am not very
familar with all of the jargin in the error that Delphi produced when I tried to
install the second half of Crystal Reports.
I just want to create a Crystal Report and access it from a Delphi form. I am
not even sure how Crystal Reprots is supposed to work within Delphi. Are you
supposed to be able to design a report in Delphi with imported Crystal Report
components? Or, do you create the report in the Crystal Reports applicatoin and
then export it into Delphi????
So many questions....
Thanks for your time,
Lisa
"Brion L. Webster" wrote:
> I'm only familiar with Crystal. There is a relatively steep learning curve,
> just like Delphi. It's easy to create simple reports, and deceptively
> difficult to create more complex reports. I'd be happy to help with any
> specific questions.
>
> If you have a choice, Crystal Reports version 7 coupled with the Crystal
> Report Designer from www.suprasoft.com is probably the best Crystal
> implementation. Even so, it's not likely to ever be an "end-user designer".
> Just sell custom report creation as an add-on service!
>
> With Crystal & Delphi, you do not need to distribute the entire run-time
> package. Contrary to Seagate's instructions, you only need to distribute 4
> files:
>
> crpe32.dll (5+ MB, works great if you upx or aspack it)
> crpaig32.dll (225 KB)
> implode.dll (18K)
> and a data driver dll specific to Crystal.
>
> If you place these in your application directory, when you shell to a
> Crystal report it will find them. That eliminates all of the "Different
> versions" issues. Of course, you wind up with potential duplicate dll's,
> but I've got this down to less than 2 MB of space. I don't think that's too
> much to ask.
>
> Crystal ships with several different data drivers, all starting with p2*.
> Usually the name of the database it is intended for is included in the name.
> There are lots of u2* dll's that contain helper functions. If your users
> want to save reports as different file formats, like Excel, text, etc. or
> e-mail them to other people, you can include the appropriate u2*.dll file to
> "snap-in" that added functionality. These vary from about 10K to 800K,
> averaging about 100K.
>
> If you use the default Crystal functionality included from Seagate, using
> the UCrpe32 components, you will have to establish a separate data
> connection from within Crystal. This can be time-consuming to code and
> difficult to figure out, especially if you're going against an SQL database.
> Crystal's implementation of SQL stinks. I highly recommend going the
> "Active Data" route.
>
> If you purchase the Crystal Designer from www.suprasoft.com, you can use
> Active Data reports. You design these reports from a tab-delimited field
> roster representing your dataset. When you preview the report, you can only
> view one record (the sample from the .ttx field roster file). However, when
> you hook it up at run-time, you can bind the report to your dataset. This
> allows you to execute all the SQL or filtering or whatever you want in
> Delphi, and pass the result-set to the report, instead of establishing a
> separate data connection with Crystal. The active data driver is
> p2smon.dll.
>
> So far, the design component does not support Crystal Reports version 8 (or
> I can't get it to work).
>
> The other benefit to picking up Crystal is the sheer frequency with which it
> occurs. It comes with vba addins for Microsoft Excel and Access.
> PeopleSoft bundles it with their PeopleTools. Lots of programs use it as an
> optional or default reporting tool. That helps you find employees, and
> builds a re-sellable skill.
>
> Hope it helps,
> -Brion
>
> "Ed Dressel" <E...@brandentech.com> wrote in message
> news:38E3B16E...@brandentech.com...
Brion L. Webster
over here, and it's been at least 18 months since I've dealt with CR 6.
I have heard rumors of people trying to use the ActiveX Crystal Report
designer in Delphi, but I've never seen it demonstrated in practice.
Basically, Crystal is moving more towards being a VB plug-in than a
stand-alone or multi-vendor reporting tool. The ActiveX controls are really
intended for VB integration. Beyond those issues, the ActiveX Report
Designer component does not expose about 25% of the functionality available
in Crystal. For example, you cannot create a landscaped report using the
RDC in VB.
You should download the latest VCL components from Seagate Software. They
were last updated for Crystal Reports 7 MR1, but they are supposed to work
with Crystal 6:
http://community.seagatesoftware.com/communityCS/FilesAndUpdates/7vcl551.exe
.asp
Follow the instructions in UCrpe32.hlp to install the package into Delphi.
At this point, you get a single component added (which I moved to my Data
Access Tab), the hint is Crpe, it looks like a little report with arrows
around it with a blue background.
In my previous post, I mentioned I use www.suprasoft.com 's Crystal Designer
component to pass in-memory datasets (any TDataset descendent) to Crystal.
There is a TI on Seagate's web-site on how to do this yourself in Delphi,
but I've never done that. If you use an in-memory dataset, you develop your
report against "ttx" files, or Active Data, Field Definitions Only under the
SQL/ODBC option. If you don't use either of these two approaches, you must
allow Crystal to make a separate, independant connection to the database.
Before you can go any further, you must design your report in the Crystal
stand-alone designer, crw32.exe. Establish connections to your datasource,
develop your report, etc. Preview it as best as you can through Crystal.
Save the report to an rpt file (the default behavior), then CLOSE it.
Assuming you're going with the Crystal VCL:
In your Delphi project at design time, add the CRPE component to your form.
There are several properties you can set, or you can set them at run-time.
Set the report name, path, and database logon settings at a minimum. I get
a lot of mileage out of Crpe1.ReportName := ExtractFilePath(ParamStr(0)) +
'Report.rpt'. You can even retrieve formulas and overwrite their values.
Doing this allows you to change labels, etc, or pass parameters to Crystal
to change what it uses for the Selection Formula or display properties.
This could take hours to discuss properly.
On your form, have something (like a button click) trigger the Crpe1.Execute
property. By default, you'll get a Crystal preview window with buttons for
forward, back, print, export, mail, etc. There are LOTS of options you can
set, like directly to printer, directly to e-mail, different buttons on the
preview screen, etc.
I hope that helps, if you need more info, maybe you can send a sample or be
explicit where it breaks down. I think the key is you need to develop the
report outside of Delphi.
-Brion
brion....@ci.fresno.ca.us
"CHAD FAHEY" <FAH...@odhs.state.oh.us> wrote in message
news:390996A8...@odhs.state.oh.us...
> Hello Brion,
<snip>
> So many questions....
> Thanks for your time,
> Lisa
>
<snip>