Which is better: Actuate or Crystal XI

[Palmbak]

I'm in the process of instituting a reporting solution throughout my company. My experience is with Crystal but they are pushing Actuate... so my question is; which is better or does it depend on the reporting/analysis requests?


Any thoughts will be highly appreciated.


- Jon

Jon Palmbak
Senior Business Consultant

http://www.metlife.com

 

[Klaudionov]

Hi Palmbak!

I've developed in Crystal for about an year and now I'm starting with Actuate.

My opinion is that if you'll have experienced people developing in Actuate, than it's a good choise but if you don't have it, it is better to use Crystal because it's more user-friendly and it's also a very powerfull tool and it has the possibility to interact with more database types than Actuate.

If you'll chose Crystal, you'll have to create a dedicated application to allow your user to access the reports.

One other thing is that CR technical support is much better then actuate and quicker.

Regards

 

[gdwood]

Our corporation uses both tools for reporting. In the old days crystal had little or no decent web based reporting capabilities, something that it now does have, but still not to the same degree as Actuate.

So I would say that if you want a web based reports, you will probably want to side on Actuate as although Crystal is a bit easier from a user-friendly perspective, Actuate is easy enough to learn. And if your developers have VBA experience, then they shoudl catch on quick to the 'coding'.

Cognos Reportnet is a possibility too, but they have their own syntax and there is a learning curve.

 

[h0h0h0]

Actuate hands down for web reporting. We are a crystal Actaute shop moving to Crystal due to over all IT standards and because Crystal integrated well with a proprietary system we were purchasing. But boy Actuate was slick! It's very expensive now though .