licensing question

[mmarino]

Hi there, I hope I'm in the right forum, if not please redicrect me.
I can't find a straight answer to this question, so hopefully someone here has run into the same situation.
We have Crystal Reports XI Developer. We are creating a website for a client, and will be hosting the site for them. We'll have at least 20 different reports that need to be viewed by customers of our client (those reports will run on real time). I read on the Business Objects Site that if we own the Developer version, then our client would need to buy the same to be able to distribute reports. I called them to make sure, and now they tell me I need to buy CR Server Embedded which is around $25K.
All I need users to do is view and print reports. We don't need other features like exporting or scheduling.
I looked at the list in ken hamady's site, but those are all run as distributed applications, and although I can estimate how many users will be on our client's site I don't have a hard number, so I really need something that is on our side instead of the user's computer.
Has anyone been in this situation? What did you use?
Thanks for all the help

Monica

 

[MJRBIM]

Like the Geneva Convention, the BOBJ license is subject to a lot of interpretation....

Depending on how you embed the reports in your application, I think that the way you are reading the information on the website is correct.

If you have a BOBJ sales contact theya re the best person to ask, and I always suggest that you have them e-mail the response so that you have a copy of the answer in writing.

 

[elsenorjose]

Monica,

Unfortunately your client would need to get a license for themselves and each of THEIR client's who wants to run the reports. When you buy Crystal you're basically getting a runtime engine license so to create or run reports, every person running or creating would need a license. It's a pain, yes, but you don't want to run afoul of licensing laws.

However, you don't need to purchase the server product, you CAN publish the reports to your own web server and use Java, .Net, or COM components to interface with them. Based on the number of licenses you need, getting a volume discount could be cheaper. Each CR Developer license is $500 so unless you need 50, you should come in much lower than $25K for the server product.

But in the long run, if you are going to grow your business into this area, that is hosting web sites with reporting applications, you probably will want to look into the server product.

Business Objects has a whitepaper on licensing. It might not be any clearer than what you've already read but it goes into a bit more detail.

http://www.businessobjects.com/pdf/whitepapers/crxi_licensing_whitepaper.pdf

 

[kenhamady]

A couple of my own opinions:

1) Talking to a BO sales rep is never the best way to get a clear picture of what the license says or allows. It is the best way to get a clear picture of what BO wants you to do, ie spend more money.

2) BO confuses the issue by using the phrases "internal deployment" vs "external distribution". It would be clearer if they said single deployment vs application distribution. Setting up a single web site does not involve "distributing" an application to a third party so you only need one copy of XI Dev. The application and reports are not being distributed even though they are available to the customers on the web. If you were installing the application on several servers for different companies that would be a distribution.

3) The Developers license doesn't allow you to host a site for someone else with your Dev license. The customer needs a license for their website regardless of who hosts it. But that one license should be enough to run reports on a web site as long as the throughput is enough for you. That is the real issue. Is the throughput of the base runtime (a single processing thread I believe) going to be enough for the volume.

Ken Hamady, On-site Custom Crystal Reports Training & Consulting
Public classes and individual training.
Guides for Formulas, Parameters, Subreports, VB, .NET, Tips and Tricks

http://www.kenhamady.com/

 

[n2nuk]

I have a similar dilemma, in that I would like to send out 200+ bursted reports to our users. Due to liencing costs I have resorted to exporting the report to PDF format and publishing that.

Its not as flexible in that users cannot run or tweak the report, but allows viewing and printing of pre-run reports. The report is refereshed on a weekly schedule.

Naz