Comparison between Crystal Reports and Impromptu

[ashishh]

Hi,

I am evaluating the reporting software. I have only used Crystal Reports and I have no idea how Cognos Imporomptu works. We normally use J2EE environment for developing software and would use the reporting tool to generate reports on the web.

Does someone have any comparisons available?


Thanks,
Ashish

 

[gazolba]

Forget Impromptu for this. Use either Crystal Reports or Actuate. Both are vastly superior to Impromptu. You will also find it much easier to locate people who know Crystal Reports than Impromptu. Web-based reporting tools have very expensive licencing. You can develop your own web reports using ASP.

 

[Kaiaualad]

I dont agree at all.If you are comparing apples to apples, although Crystal reports are ok, Cognos has much more flexibility and functionality in both client and the Web.

Creating proprietary software is something else entirely.

It is true that as a result of the extra functionality in Cognos,it takes longer to become proficient.

I wholeheartedly agree that the pricing of Cognos licenses needs to drop - they do market themselves as "enterprise Software" which rules out the small operator - and their courses cost far too much for what they deliver.

 

[puppyquestion1]

I agree with Kaiaualad.

Depends on what you're trying to do. Impromptu costs muy bucks because it can do alot; same with Impromptu Web Reports. They're built for the enterprise with hundreds of users and need security, report flexibility, scalability, etc.

Crystal Reports, OTOH, was bundled for free with many apps for a good reason. It is limited in scope with what it can do out of the box. You'll typically have to do a lot more programming using CR than Impromptu.

So, it you have lots of users, need alot of flexibility, and have the bucks, Impromptu.

If you have more time (to program stuff) and less users/money, Crystal Reports.

 

[ashishh]

Thanks puppyquestion1 and Kaiaulad for your responses. Now that we have decided to go with Cognos, and I 've taken some training on Impromptu, I know a little more about Cognos.

I agree with you guys that it is more feature rich. It is intended for a large user groups who are writing reports for their own departments. The "Catalog" concept makes lot of sense with that.

I have a deploymnet question: What are the interface available to deply Impromptu for a J2EE application? Can you give me some pointers to start investigating. I have come across Cognos-Web Services product. Is this something we want to be using for deplyoing our reports? Our requirement is that users are transparent to which tool we are using. All they do is click on a button, and behind the scenes, the J2EE application submits the request to Impromptu server or any other layer in between, which generates the report, passes the URL back to application which opens up a new browser for the report.

There is so little info available about Cognos, it is very hard to find any documents/white papers describing the technology.

Thanks for your time and response.
Ashish

 

[gazolba]

The comments made indicate unfamiliarity with the latest versions of Crystal Reports. It has all the features of Impromptu and more. It also supports the 'catalog' concept' or can read database views or stored procedure output. CR also has a full programming language behind it that means you can customize it to solve almost any reporting problem. It has full web-based reporting out of the box - though the cost of licences will send many screaming away in horror.
Actuate is probably more powerful than CR but is infinitely more complex if you are not familiar with OOP concepts.
I've used all of these report writers.

 

[griffindm]

Some questions for gazolba:

How does the newer versions of Crytal Reports handle outer-join requests beyond the capacity of the database? How do they handle column and row level security by userclass? How do they handle data from different databases at the same time (hotfiles in Cognos)?

I've tried the Query approach in Crystal (similar to catalogs in Impromptu) several years ago and was not impressed with the portability between different databases myself.

Impromptu and CR are different products, each with distinct strengths and weaknesses.

Dave Griffin


The Decision Support Group
Reporting Consulting with Cognos BI Tools
"Magic with Data"
Want good answers? Read FAQ20-2863 first!

http://www.decisionsupportgroup.com

 

[kiran03]

Hi Ashish,

We can do that,

Just after publishing ur reports to Upfront, w will have URLs for those reports.
create the properties file(ur Application Server) and try to use those URLs in that file according to ur req.

when u click the button, it will communicate with IWR server and generates the reports/

try this..and let me know any issues.

thx,
kiran