Report Builder Questions

rbuser

Hi,

We are looking at moving from Crystal Reports to Report Builder for a large
Delphi 7 app. I'd appreciate it if anyone could spare the time to answer a
few questions which I've had problems finding simple answers to on the site.

1. The site does not seem to differentiate between the run-time display and
the designer? When deploying a Delphi app, does this include a run-time
designer for end-users? Can these be stored to disk (or in a database, etc.)
can redisplayed to users in the future?

2. How is performance? I assume because it is using the building database
connections provided by the system, it would be fairly fast? I assume that
you can just point it to a database and it can figure out the tables,
fields, etc.

3. How do people find it compared to Crystal in terms of layout ability? Say
printing on pre-printed forms, graphics, logos, etc.

4. Installation. What is required to install and deploy on client
workstations? Is anything else required for the designer?

5. How much does it add to the .EXE?


Many thanks,

Brett

rbuser

I am not a report builder master, but I can give you a light
1. You can costumize the designer to your app. You can make it the same as
you have to design your reports. Yes, it's very powerfull

2. I think the performance is not the strong for Report Builder. I think it
could be a little faster, or I am not using it correctly

3. I didn't know Crystal, but with Report Builder you can make a lot of
kinds of reports. I don't like the cross references reports it generates,
the only weak point to me

4. The better part is that you don't have to install anything on the client
except with you use runtime packages. Everything is included in your exe,
and my executables grows about 600kb by putting RB on it..

5. Answered above

Regards

Carlson

nicocizik

Hi Brett,

Thanks for evaluating ReportBuilder.

1. ReportBuilder Pro comes with the ability to deploy a run-time designer
exactly like the one you use at design time in Delphi. This gives your end
users the ability to design and save reports inside your app. Reports can
be saved to a template file (.rtm) or to database as a BLOB stream. The
Report Explorer is also included, which gives your users a "Windows
Explorer" style interface to navigate the reports on a database. If you
would like an example of the End-User capabilities of ReportBuilder, please
see the Report Explorer demo located in the \RBuilder\Demos\3. EndUser\1.
Report Explorer\... directory.

2. The speed of ReportBuilder is dependent on many different items ranging
from your network/database speed to your printer driver. Of course the
speed of any software product is a very subjective topic. Being that I am a
Digital Metaphors engineer, my opinion may not be what you are looking for
. My suggestion would be to download a trial copy of ReportBuilder
Enterprise and re-create one of your most complicated reports with it. This
will definitely give you a better idea if ReportBuilder can meet your
expectations on speed.

3. Hopefully one of our other customers will chime in on this one. I can
tell you that creating pre-printed forms and adding graphics and logos are
all very easy to do with ReportBuilder.

4. To install ReportBuilder on a client machine (perhaps inside your app)
all you will need to include is the ReportBuilder Runtime packages, and any
language packages you might need.

5. Depending on the features you would like to give your users, the .exe
typically does not grow beyond 1Mb when you add ReportBuilder to your
application. If you decide to give your users access to our built in Data
workspace (DADE) and Calc workspace (RAP) the executable will grow a bit
larger.

I hope this answered some of your questions. If you have any more while
evaluating, please feel free to ask me anytime on this newsgroup.

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