RBuilder vs. QuickReports

rbuser

Hi,

I was telling my colleague about ReportBuilder and attempting to
convince him to purchase a copy for his project. He wanted to know what
ReportBuilder can do that QuickReports cannot do. He things QR is better,
I told him about RB and its awards but he wants something more concrete.

Can anyone point me to a side-by-side comparison of the capabilities
of these two products? or anything relating to an answer for his question?
Maybe this is an FAQ and I am just not looking in the proper place?


R

rbuser

Well, since you ask...just my 2 cents worth. I have found RB to be very
flakey. It have spent more time with this area of my latest project than any
sane person would believe (and I would hate for my boss to find out). I have
problems with the simplest of reports in RB - I can spend days on a simple
two table master-child report.. Unbelievable. Then I do quite complex
reports the first time - and it works. Beats me. The system is not reliable
enough - so I would be loathe to push anyone into it at all.

rbuser

I never used Quick Report.

Report builder is much easier than Quick Report.

Also offers support to wmf files for forms, bar code and other enhancements.

Print Preview, designer are excelent on Report builder.

Sergio Melchiori

digitalmetaphors

If it really is taking you days to complete small tasks, please e-mail
support@digital-metaphors.com. We can likely reduce your 'downtime'
substantially. And after all that's what we're here for!

Cheers,

Tom Ollar
Digital Metaphors Corporation

digitalmetaphors

There are feature tables for each ReportBuilder Edition on our website. Surf
www.digital-metaphors.com


Cheers,

Jim Bennett
Digital Metaphors

rbuser

I have found that RB's printer handling capabilities to be far
superior than what is in QR. Trying to print to a non-default paper
tray on a late model HP LaserJet with QR was (the last time I tried)
an exercise in futility. I used to maintain a list of printers that
would just not work with QR.

The end user reporting editing is so far beyond what you can do with
QR, it's not even a valid comparison.

Comparing RB with QR is an apples to oranges type of comparision. You
get much less with QR, but it's also priced much lower. In the long
run, the higher price of RB gets you more features, support, updates,
etc. If you are on a tight budget and your reporting needs are
modest, than QR may be enough.

You could also tell your friend that the guy who handled tech support
for QR 3 years uses RB, but would more appropriate for another
newsgroup

On Tue, 26 Mar 2002 19:32:06 -0600, "Ron"

rbuser

rbuser

"Bruce Roberts" wrote in message

rbuser

One of the most common preview screens I see with RB is a blank screen! It
is like writing CGI scripts in perl. You have no idea what is going wrong to
give you the problem. You simply get no output.

As I said, some reports seem to work just fine, and for that it is a perfect
tool - very powerful and I could not be more supportive and encouraging.

But some reports - I get a simple blank page. Or meaningless rubbish. My
current report (that I have spent days on) is a simple Master-Detail one. I
have given up on the detail stuff completely - I have removed it while I get
the Master stuff to work. I have 5 records in the master table (query)
feeding through a normal pipeline to a couple of fields on the report.
Simple basic stuff. I should get 5 rows on the report, right? I don't. I get
one. Alsways the same one, but it is not even the first one (in any order I
can determine). I have checked every option I can think of...it drives me
silly. I have even wiped all the components and started again (sometimes
they get corrupted).

As I said, I have other reports that work just fine - and some quite complex
ones, so I do basically know what I am doing. But this is not a 'one-of' -
many simple reports took me ages to get to work - and often I am not too
sure why they worked in the end. The problem is you get a blank preview
screen for so long (when you plainly shouldn't), then you instantly get the
full report, working as you knew it should on the first try.

I am using the Asta DADE, so perhaps that is the culprit. Could be. I get
data at the query that feeds the pipeline - I have checked this many times
(with attached grids, labels, etc). But often it does not get to the form,
hence the blank preview. Funnily enough I always get sample values displayed
in edit mode, so some data is getting through.

And it make no difference if I do the designing at designtime or runtime.

The reason I have not bothered support is

1. the reports are generally so simple it surely cannot be a problem - it
has to be me. But I am starting to doubt that now.
2. It is too hard to do up a dummy/sample project with Asta/MySQL. Probably
impossible, so why bother?

And despite what a few people have said, the manuals/help is really rather
poor. The manuals are quite thick, I grant you that, but the actual
information content is very small. The sample reports are a lot better, and
frankly without those I would have been totally lost. This newsgroup has
also been a great help.

For anyone looking at comparing packages, I would have to say that there is
nothing better out there. When it works RB is great.

rbuser

Kerry,
to me that sounds like a lot of bull...
i do believe that you have problems
but let me assure you that i have built quite complex reports in a fraction
of the time that it had took me to build them in QR
and i knew QR rather well
you should post your problems so you can get advice on how to solve them!
cu
marc

rbuser

> But some reports - I get a simple blank page. Or meaningless rubbish.

Sounds like a problem with the NoDataBehaviour properties of the involved
Pipelines...

Just a guess though.

Oliver
-----------------------
JID: ogiesen@jabber.org
ICQ: 18777742
Y! : ogiesen

rbuser

RB 6.03 is not good tested product!
I can not ported my old reports from RB 4.23.
Support tell me:
"It is always a good idea to have the latest printer drivers."

I see, it is always a good idea to sell the well tested software.



"Ron" ???????/???????? ? ???????? ?????????:

rbuser

What you are saying is equivalent to say that D6 is not good tested because you
have some problems migrating from D3.