Talking about Crystal Reports

rbuser

Hi, bad news to me... a new customer has Crystal and want it's reports
made on Crystal.
I'm fighting hard to convince them to use RB... i don't even use Crystal
since version 5 and i hated it.
I know that Digital-Metaphors has as a policy never speak bad about it's
competitors. (Nice policy by the way). But i'll be very thankful if you
give me a list of why is RB superior to Crystal for my Delphi project.
Thanks in advance.
--
Guillermo Castaño Acevedo
Gerente de Sistemas - Grupo Millennium Ltda
GuillermoC@GrupoMillennium.com
http://www.GrupoMillennium.com

digitalmetaphors

Here are the top reasons to use ReportBuilder over Crystal.

1. If you come across something that you would like to implement but that is
out of scope of Crystal's functionality you are stuck. RB, on the other hand
is very extensible and pluggable. If you can't extend RB by creating a
custom descendant of some component or a plug-in, as a last resort you can
turn to modifying it's source.

2. Crystal uses proprietary data access. RB uses Delphi components which are
numerous in selection and availability. This gives you further reaching
options in configuring your report.

3. RAP, RB's runtime coding environment, is extensible using Object Pascal
while Crystal Script must be used to extend Crystal's runtime scripting.

4. Since RB is 100% ObjectPascal it can be compiled directly into the
executable which greatly simplifies distribution and does not require
dependency on existence and/or distribution of any other packages on the
customer's machine.

5. Finally, if an end user application is being developed, a Crystal license
must be purchased for every end user if certain components, such as the
designer, are being distributed in the end user application. RB does not
have that requirement and allows you to freely distribute end user solution
without having to purchase individual end user licenses.

Hope this helps!

--
Cheers,

Alexander Kramnik
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

Hi Alexander,


that's not the whole truth, using the internationalized version of
ReportBuilder needs the distribution of the translated string resources, a
bunch of 4 files per language. (but that's really no reason to stay with
Crystal)

Cheers,
Chris Ueberall;

rbuser

In my experience there is one BIG reason. Crystal incompatibility accross
versions and .DLL's. You can find tons of places with the same situation.
Program 1 was built using crystal 6 and works great. Another application is
installed that used crystal 8 for reporting. The old application does not
work. You 'fix' .DLL versions and such to get old application to properly
print output. New application no longer prints.

Until the idiots at Seagate ever think to make the .DLL's supporting their
VCL backwards compatible, I'll have no use for them.

--
Chris Yoder
Programmer
Stven J. Baum, P.C.

rbuser

Hi Chris,

I left Crystal after version 5, and could add some reasons too!
Using one set of DLLs has never been a good idea, it's the same problem as
with the BDE.

regards,
Chris Ueberall;