CE and CR alternatives?

[msf11]

I am wondering what other good software is out there that I can use as an alternative to Crystal Enterprise and/or Crystal Reports (i'm shopping around). I Need the software to be able to do the following:

-Automatically generate reports for set times at least once a day (pulling data from an oracle database)

-Allow multiple users to access the reports simultaneously and give different permissions to the user groups (only allow certain users to view certain reports)

-Allow users to modify reports and create their own queries (this feature would be very nice, but is not absolutely essential)

-Ability to allow end users to export reports into several formats including pdf and excel (and hopefully export into excel better than Crystal)

Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Thanks for your help!

-marc

 

[msf11]

Sorry,
I also forgot to explicitly state the I want the reports to be able to be distributed on the web (as with crystal enterprise).

 

[rhinok]

There are a number of large-scale commercial products available that have many of the same features as CR/CE:

Actuate
Cognos
Business Objects
Brio
etc...

Some of these products are used more for OLAP queries than for end-user reporting. None of these products are cheap.

There are less expensive CR options, some of which have been developed by users of these forums. Depending on how you use those products, however, you may be required to purchase a Crystal Broadcast License, which is very expensive ($100k or $25k/yr). Alternately, you could build your own Report Distribution system, which is expensive in itself and you may still need to purchase a CBL if your system is based on Crystal.

FYI, attached is a link to a comparison of Crystal and Actuate:

Thread782-267784

 

[msf11]

Thanks for the advice rhinok! I'm going to look into these options. If anyone else knows other good options, please let me know!

-marc

 

[SurfingGecko]

You may also want to have a look at

http://kenhamady.com

In the Tools link he has listed several CR related tools by classification that you may find useful [and affordable].



Cheers,

SurfingGecko

http://www.surfinggeckosoftware.com

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