I am confused....

rbuser

Hi,

I am a delphi 5 enterprise user.
I have received your email annoucing Report Builder 7 ( Congratulations ).
I saw that RB7 will support Delphi 6 and 7, perhaps delphi 5.
So... What RB 6.5 all about?
What´s the difference between 6.5 and 7?

Does RB 6.5 also support Web reports? Even with Delphi 5?
If it does, is there any licenses fee?

About those licenses... I will have one for developping.
What about my customer. All of them have a server/PC that could be used
as a Report Builder Web Server report. Do I have to have a license for
each of them? Even for RB6.5? what about RB7?

Is there a number of users limit for accessing the server. I mean, If I
place the report in a company with 1 server/ 5 clients and in another
one with 1 server / 25 clients, will there be a setup or do I have to
define parameters to have the report working properly?

Best regards,
Clément

digitalmetaphors

> I have received your email annoucing Report Builder 7 ( Congratulations ).

Thankyou! In the next few weeks, we expect to release ReportBuilder 7.0 for
the Standard, Professional and Enterprise Editions. Since Delphi 7 is about
to be released, and an entirely brand new edition of ReportBuilder is being
released, we decided to name the latest version of ReportBuilder as 7.0.
There will not be a 6.5 version. Here is the licensing information as it
was announced in our Announcements newsgroup some months ago:


The Server Edition contains one developer license (which allows a single
developer to use the ReportBuilder development environment within Delphi)
and two server deployment licenses (which allow a report server to be
deployed on a single PC with unlimited-user access.) Additional server
deployment licenses are available for US $249. The first deployment license
is for use as a development report server. The second deployment license is
for one deployment of your report server to one customer. If you have more
than one server to deploy, you need to purchase additional deployment
licenses.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

I am a bit confused also.

As I understand it, the 7.0 server edition has been announced. That is
great, been waiting for it. However, I cannot find ANYTHING on any new
features of RB 7.0 over RB 6.03. I understand the server edition includes
this new server product, but what else does 7.0 bring to the table?

You website shows an upgrade from 6.03 to 6.5 - as I understand it you have
now renamed 6.5 to 7.0, correct? Again, what features did 6.5 have in it
(over 6.03) for the $275?

Finally, I see that RB Server is $999. I am assuming that RB server is a
superset of RB Enterprise. If I own RB Enterprise, how much is the upgrade
to RB Server - $250? (Retail price difference)

Bottom line is this - I own 6.03 Enterprise, I would of course want to
upgrade to your 7.x product if there are new features, etc worth the $275.
At the same time, while I have already built my own thread safe version of
6.03 as I documented to this group some time back, I still might be
interested in just using your product, as it should be superior to my
implementation....how much would that be?

Thanks

Wayne

rbuser

I'm confused as well. I bought 6.03 Enterprise in May and haven't even
deployed it to a customer yet. Then I see 6.5 edition and try and upgrade
but the online ordering system crashed out. Then minutes later I had an
email about RB7.

I then think, hold on, what is the difference between 6.03 and 6.5, and
then 7.

The websites gives no information on this. Could you please clarify Jim. I
only wish to go through the hassle of upgrading one set of source if
possible.

I do not intend purchasing D7 BTW (it's a pointless release for me).

regards

Richard

digitalmetaphors

ReportBuilder 7.0 includes the Outline, making it easier to navigate through
the report, instead of only by page as in the previous preview. DADE and
RAP are threadsafe. We updated the popular DADE plugins for thread safety.

There is a new DBArchiveReader component to display your archived reports
from a database, just like you can display them from file using the
ArchiveReader component.

No longer do you have to code an event handler to maximize the preview form.
The PreviewFormSettings property of the Report lets you configure how you
want the preview form to look. The old event handler approach will still
work in the report solutions you have implemented with a prior version of
RB.

Yes, RB Server does include RB Enterprise. If you purchased ReportBuilder
Enterprise 6.03 on or after November 14, 2001, you can upgrade to Server
Edition for $799.

If you purchased on or after July 1, 2002, you may upgrade your edition of
ReportBuilder to the latest version for free. All upgrade fees listed on
our website apply to licenses purchased before July 1, 2002.

I remember your post and congradulations on building a thread safe version
of RB! Our version supports autosearch on the thin client on on the web
client. Do you have this feature? We also have a report explorer your can
run in a thin client application or a web browser to preview the reports. We
also have a WebTier component which dynamically builds XHTML and Javascript
to give your end users the look and feel of the standard windows preview
they are used to in a web browser which can run in IE or Netscape. Again, we
added thread safety to the entire product, so now you can use DADE and RAP
in a multi-threaded environment.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

digitalmetaphors

Sorry about that, we just updated the website to remove all references to
6.5, since we are naming it 7.0. You can get all of the bug fixes we put
together for 6.03 and also some new features in ReportBuilder 7.0 which I
mentioned in this thread in response to Mr. Brantley's post. We haven't
released RB 7 for the other editions, but we should release it in a few
weeks.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Hi Jim,


DM promised a maintenance release for 6.03 since ~ 9 months ago, I am very
surprised that this version has been canceled.

regards,
Chris Ueberall;

digitalmetaphors

ReportBuilder 7 contains all of the fixes for 6.03 plus all the new
features. The pricing of the upgrade varies depending on when you purchased
ReportBuilder 6.03. The maintenance release was not cancelled:) The
maintenance update is included in ReportBuilder 7 which will be released in
a few weeks. Thankyou for your patience.


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Hi Jim,

I have no problem with the pricing, but I never would call it a maitenance
release when there is a compiler update needed, currently I have to stay
with D5.
I personally would have no problem to retrofit the packages for D5 but this
isn't possible with the Enterprise version.

regards,
Chris Ueberall;

purchased
in
which
haven't
few
very

rbuser

What does my multithreaded version support - not much. I essentially call a
url that looks like this:

http://mydomain.com/securedusers/reportengine.dll?reportname=blah&param1=10&
customerid=20&....

and that url returns a pdf with the report in it. It has been working
great, but would rather kill the project and outsource that to you guys!

Small concern with the source not being available to the server edition.
What problems might that pose?
What if (heavens forbid) you guys go out, quit updating, etc?
Currently if something is broken, I can find and fix it....or you can tell
me the fix is the following code, etc. How will that work if we dont have
the code?
Blah, blah, blah....
Exactly what do we NOT get the code to? Is it like RB where we get _most_
of the code, but not some key pieces?

Wayne

rbuser

already answered in another thread.

rbuser

Great news about the RB7.0 and thread safety in a multi threaded
environment - where were you guys 6 weeks ago when I had to get a
backend report server version out to supply PDF reports.

The report server that we had to develop was to a specific user
requirement and does not need the flexibility built into the RB Server
version for web reporting such as HTML, Javascript etc. The main
issues that we battled with and had to workaround was the multi
threading issues.

Will the update of RB Enterprise 7.0 also include the threadsafe code
for DADE, RAP and daSQL\daMetaData or is this only available within
the Server version. I hope so as I cannot justify having to upgrade to
the server version and then also to charge them for a per CPU licence.

On the per CPU licence I also have a concern. Many of our clients use
a single W2000 multi CPU server to run their database, file an print
sharing, mail etc. The multi CPU was purchased to enable them to run
many types of applications on one computer as opposed to a seperate
database server, seperate mail server, seperate file & print server
etc. If we had to supply them with a multi threaded EMail server built
from your RB Server version which enabled them to EMail completed
reports in PDF format overnight to their users they would be penalised
for the multi their CPU use. Many of them do not even have their own
web sites!

I also share Wayne's concern that the source code is not available for
the Server version - the RB 6.03 with source was an invaluable
investment to us in trying to find the multi threading problems and
also a great learing tool when we had problems.



On Mon, 26 Aug 2002 10:35:14 -0500, "Jim Bennett \(Digital

rbuser

I was just at your web site and don't see anything that talks about 7.0,
only 6.5.

--
Jeff

digitalmetaphors

Where exactly do you see 6.5 mentioned?


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

"Jeff Kreider" wrote in message