I have been using Crystal Reports for the past 3 years. Crystal is a great product when developing your reports. It's awesome. You can do almost anything with Crystal.
However, when you try to get these reports incorporated into your application, trouble always seems to arise.
Using Visual Basic to call Crystal Reports can be a hassle because the user may not have the appropriate DLLs on their PC. Then, you have to search for the missing DLLs, blah, blah, blah. If anyone has used Crystal and VB, I am sure they have had this problem.
Nowadays, more and more people are developing applications to be used over the web. If you want to have your Crystal accessed from a web application, you are going to have to make a major decision now that Crystal Reports 8.5 is on the scene. Crystal Reports 8 used a Web Component Server (WCS) to display your Crystal Reports on the web. This technique was great because all you had to do was put the path of the report and any parameters needed right in the URL. There was no limit to who could view the Crystal Reports over the web.
Well, the people at Crystal were like, "We are not making enough money off of our product. Let's find a way to charge users for viewing reports over the web." Crystal Reports 8.5 is born. No more WCS. No more unlimited viewing. The WCS is replaced with Crystal Enterprise 8, a product that allows users to manage reports. Now, managing reports is great and all, but I would think when you are in a web application, you would want to call your reports right from the application and call the reports just like you used to in previous versions of Crystal - through a URL.
This is how Crystal sticks it to you - Crystal Enterprise 8 comes with 5 concurrent user licenses. 5 licenses may be enough for some small companies, but I think this number is too small for most companies. Here is a scenario: 5 people click on a URL in your web application that calls a Crystal Report all around the same time. When a 6th person tries to call a Crystal Report, the report will not display because all 5 licenses are being used. You have to wait 20 minutes from the time the user who clicked on a report the earliest. Wow.
Something I also discovered was that a user can use up all 5 licenses on one PC. If the following steps are performed 5 times, all licenses will be used:
1) User opens up the web application
2) Calls the Crystal Report
3) Closes the web application
If the user tries to execute these steps a 6th time, the report cannot be viewed. Granted, I don't think the user would do something like this, but you never know.
You might say, "why not just buy more licenses?" Well, the latest price for 1 concurrent license is $3500. $3500 just to view a Crystal Report. Hard to justify.
So, you want to use something other than Crystal Reports. I have searched the web for other report writers that can be incorporated into web applications and the best one I have found is ActiveReports.
The standard version is $2498 for a site license from - about $1000 less then 1 concurrent user license for Crystal Enterprise.
You can distribute your reports royalty-free over the web. Best of all, if you are familiar with VB, this product behaves just like VB. Almost everything in Crystal can be done in ActiveReports.
If you are looking for an alternative to Crystal Reports, definitely check out ActiveReports.
I like Crystal Reports, but I don’t like what they have done to view reports over the web. Seems like another money making ploy to me.
However, when you try to get these reports incorporated into your application, trouble always seems to arise.
Using Visual Basic to call Crystal Reports can be a hassle because the user may not have the appropriate DLLs on their PC. Then, you have to search for the missing DLLs, blah, blah, blah. If anyone has used Crystal and VB, I am sure they have had this problem.
Nowadays, more and more people are developing applications to be used over the web. If you want to have your Crystal accessed from a web application, you are going to have to make a major decision now that Crystal Reports 8.5 is on the scene. Crystal Reports 8 used a Web Component Server (WCS) to display your Crystal Reports on the web. This technique was great because all you had to do was put the path of the report and any parameters needed right in the URL. There was no limit to who could view the Crystal Reports over the web.
Well, the people at Crystal were like, "We are not making enough money off of our product. Let's find a way to charge users for viewing reports over the web." Crystal Reports 8.5 is born. No more WCS. No more unlimited viewing. The WCS is replaced with Crystal Enterprise 8, a product that allows users to manage reports. Now, managing reports is great and all, but I would think when you are in a web application, you would want to call your reports right from the application and call the reports just like you used to in previous versions of Crystal - through a URL.
This is how Crystal sticks it to you - Crystal Enterprise 8 comes with 5 concurrent user licenses. 5 licenses may be enough for some small companies, but I think this number is too small for most companies. Here is a scenario: 5 people click on a URL in your web application that calls a Crystal Report all around the same time. When a 6th person tries to call a Crystal Report, the report will not display because all 5 licenses are being used. You have to wait 20 minutes from the time the user who clicked on a report the earliest. Wow.
Something I also discovered was that a user can use up all 5 licenses on one PC. If the following steps are performed 5 times, all licenses will be used:
1) User opens up the web application
2) Calls the Crystal Report
3) Closes the web application
If the user tries to execute these steps a 6th time, the report cannot be viewed. Granted, I don't think the user would do something like this, but you never know.
You might say, "why not just buy more licenses?" Well, the latest price for 1 concurrent license is $3500. $3500 just to view a Crystal Report. Hard to justify.
So, you want to use something other than Crystal Reports. I have searched the web for other report writers that can be incorporated into web applications and the best one I have found is ActiveReports.
The standard version is $2498 for a site license from - about $1000 less then 1 concurrent user license for Crystal Enterprise.
You can distribute your reports royalty-free over the web. Best of all, if you are familiar with VB, this product behaves just like VB. Almost everything in Crystal can be done in ActiveReports.
If you are looking for an alternative to Crystal Reports, definitely check out ActiveReports.
I like Crystal Reports, but I don’t like what they have done to view reports over the web. Seems like another money making ploy to me.