Bye, byte Crystal Reports
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norm .net wrote:
I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer.
If it compared favorable to DevExpress's report writer, I'd buy it! I'd like to divorce myself fro DevExpress as well--so bloated, quirky, and actually rather difficult for an average person to generate reports with, even using the wizard. But so far, it's the best tool I've seen. There's a report writer article here on Code Project, but it just didn't cut it, sad to say. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithI've I'd love to show you the a medium sized management report, but you'd have to mail me offline at n_._a_l_m_o_n_d_@_h_o_t_m_a_i_l_._c_o_m, I'd like to see how it compares. Eventually I'd like to create a design tool/studio to front-end the report language.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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Marc Clifton wrote:
I'd like to divorce myself fro DevExpress as well--so bloated, quirky
Don't tell me that your decision is based on that mammoth .cs source code file?
Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. -Brian Kernighan
Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Don't tell me that your decision is based on that mammoth .cs source code file?
No, more the assemblies that have to be linked in, and the usability issues. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
I've I'd love to show you the a medium sized management report, but you'd have to mail me offline at n_._a_l_m_o_n_d_@_h_o_t_m_a_i_l_._c_o_m, I'd like to see how it compares. Eventually I'd like to create a design tool/studio to front-end the report language.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
norm .net wrote:
Eventually I'd like to create a design tool/studio to front-end the report language.
Ah, that's actually the piece that is the most important. Sorry, I mistook what you were saying and thought you'd written the front-end also. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh Smith -
norm .net wrote:
Eventually I'd like to create a design tool/studio to front-end the report language.
Ah, that's actually the piece that is the most important. Sorry, I mistook what you were saying and thought you'd written the front-end also. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithMarc Clifton wrote:
Ah, that's actually the piece that is the most important. Sorry, I mistook what you were saying and thought you'd written the front-end also.
Not yet, but if want to see the code need to produce a medium sized report, you'd probably would'nt even need a front end for it. The reports themselves are Assembly (dlls) and invoked from the engine. e.g. Emerald.Loader.Run("MyReportAssembly", OutputType.PDF, @"c:\temp\myfile.pdf"); If you need a report to stream to multiple outputs you don't need to dup. code, the best way to show you is to mail me offline.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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Rama Krishna Vavilala wrote:
Don't tell me that your decision is based on that mammoth .cs source code file?
No, more the assemblies that have to be linked in, and the usability issues. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithEach report is an assembly and is loaded in using the plugin design pattern i.e. it must support IReport and reside in a specified directory for the engine to find it and execute it. You could even load the code file (.cs) compile then execute and do away with the assemblies altogether, essentially making the .cs files the actual scripts.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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norm .net wrote:
I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer.
If it compared favorable to DevExpress's report writer, I'd buy it! I'd like to divorce myself fro DevExpress as well--so bloated, quirky, and actually rather difficult for an average person to generate reports with, even using the wizard. But so far, it's the best tool I've seen. There's a report writer article here on Code Project, but it just didn't cut it, sad to say. Marc
People are just notoriously impossible. --DavidCrow
There's NO excuse for not commenting your code. -- John Simmons / outlaw programmer
People who say that they will refactor their code later to make it "good" don't understand refactoring, nor the art and craft of programming. -- Josh SmithI got frustrated using Crystal etc and started to write a replacement here[^] but got distracted when it came to the visual layout side of things. Perhaps i could send you the latest code and you could take it from there?
'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd
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I got frustrated using Crystal etc and started to write a replacement here[^] but got distracted when it came to the visual layout side of things. Perhaps i could send you the latest code and you could take it from there?
'--8<------------------------ Ex Datis: Duncan Jones Merrion Computing Ltd
Looks ok (considering it's VB ;P), but it would be better developing one from scratching consider it would have to know about the report semantics. I'd probably go for a Visual Studio form designer type app. Anyway for now I'm using it to generate our companies reports, because it's not long winded to knock a report out (5-30 minutes) I'd probaby only bother I market it or users want to write their own reports.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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I've managed to engineer out all dependancies to Crystal Reports (I hate it X| ). They've had nearly 10 years to produce a Micrsoft Style Reporting Product and still can't get it right. Well I've written my own engine, which produces output for Laser, PDF, Text, Excel., Html and RAW output to Dot Matrix Line Printers. It's written entirely in .net with a few P/Invokes and a call to GhostWriter. The reports themselves can be written in any .net lingo. I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer. So bye, bye Crystal can't say it's been great knowing you. :rose:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
Has anybody tried the new Microsoft reporting stuff in VS2005? Is it any good?
"I make up quotes." -Vincent Reynolds
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Has anybody tried the new Microsoft reporting stuff in VS2005? Is it any good?
"I make up quotes." -Vincent Reynolds
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I've managed to engineer out all dependancies to Crystal Reports (I hate it X| ). They've had nearly 10 years to produce a Micrsoft Style Reporting Product and still can't get it right. Well I've written my own engine, which produces output for Laser, PDF, Text, Excel., Html and RAW output to Dot Matrix Line Printers. It's written entirely in .net with a few P/Invokes and a call to GhostWriter. The reports themselves can be written in any .net lingo. I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer. So bye, bye Crystal can't say it's been great knowing you. :rose:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
It must be just a programmer thing to naturally type "byte" instead of "bye".
Logifusion[^] If not entertaining, write your Congressman.
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It must be just a programmer thing to naturally type "byte" instead of "bye".
Logifusion[^] If not entertaining, write your Congressman.
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I've managed to engineer out all dependancies to Crystal Reports (I hate it X| ). They've had nearly 10 years to produce a Micrsoft Style Reporting Product and still can't get it right. Well I've written my own engine, which produces output for Laser, PDF, Text, Excel., Html and RAW output to Dot Matrix Line Printers. It's written entirely in .net with a few P/Invokes and a call to GhostWriter. The reports themselves can be written in any .net lingo. I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer. So bye, bye Crystal can't say it's been great knowing you. :rose:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
I was just having a conversation yesterday with a co-worker. In all the organizations we have been in, no one has been able to get Crystal running without problems.
only two letters away from being an asset
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Has anybody tried the new Microsoft reporting stuff in VS2005? Is it any good?
"I make up quotes." -Vincent Reynolds
I have used it and consider it a good tool. Though I don't use it for very complex reports. It is certainly better than Crystal.
only two letters away from being an asset
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I've managed to engineer out all dependancies to Crystal Reports (I hate it X| ). They've had nearly 10 years to produce a Micrsoft Style Reporting Product and still can't get it right. Well I've written my own engine, which produces output for Laser, PDF, Text, Excel., Html and RAW output to Dot Matrix Line Printers. It's written entirely in .net with a few P/Invokes and a call to GhostWriter. The reports themselves can be written in any .net lingo. I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer. So bye, bye Crystal can't say it's been great knowing you. :rose:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
norm .net wrote:
I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer.
Looks like you have some interest. When do you plan to have it available?
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I was just having a conversation yesterday with a co-worker. In all the organizations we have been in, no one has been able to get Crystal running without problems.
only two letters away from being an asset
I remember working for a company where we had been using crystal 7 in our app and it had been working flawlessy for ages until one client decided they wanted to upgrade their version of crystal. Basically the crystal support guy told us that the characteristic which had allowed our app to run flawlessly all this time was actually a bug in crystal which has now been fixed. Sorry, you app doesn't work any more but we won't be can't help you.
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I was just having a conversation yesterday with a co-worker. In all the organizations we have been in, no one has been able to get Crystal running without problems.
only two letters away from being an asset
Mark Nischalke wrote:
n all the organizations we have been in, no one has been able to get Crystal running without problems
Same old story, CR is too black box, trying to make it for dummies.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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I remember working for a company where we had been using crystal 7 in our app and it had been working flawlessy for ages until one client decided they wanted to upgrade their version of crystal. Basically the crystal support guy told us that the characteristic which had allowed our app to run flawlessly all this time was actually a bug in crystal which has now been fixed. Sorry, you app doesn't work any more but we won't be can't help you.
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Oh yeah, that's why I wrote my own report engine, after upgrade from .net 1.1 to .net 2.0 things just stopped working, all the programs dependent on CR had to run under 1.1 until I reengineered them.
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
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norm .net wrote:
I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer.
Looks like you have some interest. When do you plan to have it available?
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I've managed to engineer out all dependancies to Crystal Reports (I hate it X| ). They've had nearly 10 years to produce a Micrsoft Style Reporting Product and still can't get it right. Well I've written my own engine, which produces output for Laser, PDF, Text, Excel., Html and RAW output to Dot Matrix Line Printers. It's written entirely in .net with a few P/Invokes and a call to GhostWriter. The reports themselves can be written in any .net lingo. I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer. So bye, bye Crystal can't say it's been great knowing you. :rose:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
So, I have a question for you then. What other reporting engines have you tried? I've worked with a couple. Actuate, Accelio, and PostX most recently (although PostX doesn't count). It seems to me that all reporting engines start with a "cool" idea and then add feature upon feature until there's this big, tangled mess that still doesn't quite do what you want it to. Even working with simple stuff like XSL:FO has proved limiting. Has anyone worked with reporting software that they enjoyed working with? And not to rain on your parade, but the single most desirable thing to a business about reporting software is stability. You may be able to do everything in XSL:FO and make it look good, but if it's not on a solid server with scheduling and failover and has a company behind it that's accountable, business would be wise to not buy into it.
Logifusion[^] If not entertaining, write your Congressman.
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I've managed to engineer out all dependancies to Crystal Reports (I hate it X| ). They've had nearly 10 years to produce a Micrsoft Style Reporting Product and still can't get it right. Well I've written my own engine, which produces output for Laser, PDF, Text, Excel., Html and RAW output to Dot Matrix Line Printers. It's written entirely in .net with a few P/Invokes and a call to GhostWriter. The reports themselves can be written in any .net lingo. I should market it, it's designed for developer by a developer. So bye, bye Crystal can't say it's been great knowing you. :rose:
We made the buttons on the screen look so good you'll want to lick them. Steve Jobs
Boo Yah! I too had a long and seething hatred for Crystal Reports that you can ony truly appreciate if you have spent years working with the product. Now that we're in the .net world there are oodles of great reporting products that at every point resolve some long outstanding dissapointment I had with Crystal. We use DevExpress, I've tried them all and highly recommend it.