Is Fast Report really better than Report Builder?

rbuser

I have visited the FastReport web site and quite impressed with the features
and functionality described on the web site althought I haven't tried it
yet. Just wondering, anyone of you here have any experiences or ideas what
are the pro/cons of fast report compare with Report Builder?

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Best Regards,
Chau Chee Yang

rbuser

Hi Chau,

please use NG 'borland.public.delphi.thirdparty-tools' for those kind of
questions.
If you have any questions regarding ReportBuilder, you are welcome.
You will find some pros (and the trial version) on Digital-Metaphors web
site too.

regards,
Chris Ueberall;

digitalmetaphors

ReportBuilder was voted Best Reporting Tool and Product of the Year for
the past 4 years, 1999-2002 Delphi Informant Readers Choice awards.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com

If you are evaluating reporting tools for Delphi, you owe it to yourself
to evaluate ReportBuilder. We have a trial version available from our
website at www.digital-metaphors.com which is fully functional and
offers extensive demos.

I believe that you will find the quality, simplicity and power of
ReportBuilder to be unmatched by any other reporting solution available.



I. RB Standard features:
--------------------

1. ReportDesigner easy to use, high quality, includes
report wizards and drag and drop tools
for quickly creating reports.

2. Delphi integration RB can be used within the Delphi IDE
and is very "Delphi like." You can code
event-handlers to control
the report and perform calcualtions etc.

4. Report templates Save report definitions to .rtm files or
to a database BLOB field. This enables you
to store the report layout definition outside
of the .exe and load the reports as needed.

5. Subreports ReportBuilder's implementation of free form
subreports enable developers to model complexity
in an elegant understandable manner. Once you learn
the fundamentals of Child, Section, and Fixed style
subreport you can combine them in numerous ways.
Check out our demo projects for some examples.

Using free form subreports you can truly break the
boundaries of what is referred to as simple banded
reports and do things like print forms and print
multiple
detail listings side by side.

6. Regions A region is a container for other objects - similar
to
a TPanel in Delphi.

7. Stretchable In ReportBuilder you can easily define
components dynamic relationships amongst stretching objects
such as memos, richtext, subreports, and regions by
specifying a ShiftRelativeTo property value.


8. TeeChart support Enable TeeChart to be used inside the Report
Designer.

9. DataPipeline Includes DBPipeline for use with any
architecture. TDataSet descendant, TextPipeline that can access
data stored
in ASCII files, and JITPipeline for custom event
driven access.
Create custom datapipelines for accessing data in
proprietary formats.

10. Output Device Extensible output format architecture. Include
Screen, Printer,
architecure Archive, TextFile, and Formatted Text. See
www.waler.com for
TExtraDevices which supports HTML, RTF, PDF, Excel,
etc.


11. Archiving Print reports to archive files (.raf). Then use our
ArchiveReader component to print and preview from
the
archived files.

12. Developers Guide Over 400 pages containing conceptual information
for modeling reports and step by step tutorials for
building a variety of reports.


13. Demos Extensive set of demo reports that serve as
examples.



II. RB Professional features:
--------------------------

Everything in ReportBuilder Standard plus:

Crosstab component Display calculated values in a
multi-dimensional format.
Includes a crosstab wizard and a
drag-and-drop editor.
Define any number of row, column, and value
dimensions.

Data Access Environment Adds a new 'Data' to the
(DADE) Report Designer. Enables developers
and end-users to visually design and
preview SQL queries.

Ask at Runtime support Use the Query tools to define AutoSearch
parameters. RB Pro will then display
an "Ask at Runtime" dialog to the user.


End-User Report Designer Deploy an interface your users
already know

Report Explorer Allow end-users to manage
reports and data with a
Windows Explorer style interface

Report Wizard Create new reports with a few
clicks of the mouse

Query Wizard Create new data with a few
clicks of the mouse

Query Designer Create and modify complex queries.


Data Dictionary Use the Data Dictionary component
Components to display user friendly table and
field aliases to your end-users.

Tutorials step by step instructions for
putting it all together.



III. RB Enterprise features:
--------------------------
Everything in ReportBuilder Professional plus:

Run-time Pascal Environment Report Application Pascal (RAP) is
ReportBuilder's run-time Pascal development
environment! RAP enables the entire report
definition (Data, Calculations, and Layout) to be
stored outside of the application executable. Using
RAP, developers and end-users can code
calculations and event-handlers without Delphi. RAP is
extensible - which means developers can
easily register their own built-in functions and
objects to meet specific requirements. (Source code to
RAP compiler is not included.)





I think you will find the quality, simplicity, and power to be unmatched by
any other reporting solution available.



ReportBuilder was voted Product of the Year and Best Reporting Tool
in the 1999-2002 Delphi Informant Readers Choice Awards!




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R E P O R T B U I L D E R W E B L I N K S
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You can download a trial version from:

http://digital-metaphors.com/download/rbuilderpro.html


Ordering info is available at

http://digital-metaphors.com/order/order.html


With the trial version you can create reports just as you would with the
registered version, the only limitations are max of 5 pages of output
for any report and if you print to the printer, our company info will
print on the page also.

For a quick look at what ReportBuilder is capable of run the demos:

1. RBuilder Pro\Demos\Reports\Demo.dpr - contains over 70 sample reports
that show the various cabalities of the product. Serves as a great
learning tool also.

2. RBuilder Pro\Demos\EndUser\EndUser.dpr - contains a complete,
professional end-user reporting solution including a report explorer,
query wizard, query designer, and report wizard. You can build a complete
end-user solution with no coding required.

Demos and Tutorials are included.

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Cheers,

Alexander Kramnik
Digital Metaphors