Crystal Reports - We All Love to Hate
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Mark Salsbery wrote:
time for a more positive attitude
I want to maintain my lack of positivity. It's the bleak meaningless depression of my miserable existence that keeps me getting out of bed on a morning.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
This is no time for Wuthering Heights, Pete! Even if it is me, your Kathy, come home!
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Boukh wrote:
by the way we don't have President now a days
With citizens like you, I cant blame him ;P
"There are three sides to every story. Yours, mine and the truth" ~ unknown "All things good to know are difficult to learn" ~ Greek Proverb "The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary" ~ Vidal Sassoon
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I call it lack of competition! :|
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Boukh wrote:
why do you hate microsoft that much
What? I like Microsoft. I'm not the one throwing out slander about Steve Ballmer here. Seriously, are you really this clueless or did the nurse let you out for the night?
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Boukh wrote:
i ment it as a compliment for Steve Ballmer
So, you call him gay and now it's a compliment. I realise that English isn't your first language, so you might actually want to pause and read things through a couple of times before you try to play catchup with the big boys. Hell, I suspect that language isn't your first language. ;P
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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Tim Carmichael wrote:
Yes, we all love to hate Crystal Reports, but, sometimes, we are forced to use it at our workplace.
I've come to the same conclusion. But then I wondered, are there really no good alternatives? So as a little question to all CPians out there, which alternatives are there for making printed reports?
see: http://fast-report.com/en/[^] Use it in lots of projects....its low cost, low-footprint (single dll for goodness sake)....and is easily embedded and made do lots of special / custom behaviors
Just trying to keep the forces of entropy at bay
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Tim Carmichael wrote:
Yes, we all love to hate Crystal Reports, but, sometimes, we are forced to use it at our workplace.
I've come to the same conclusion. But then I wondered, are there really no good alternatives? So as a little question to all CPians out there, which alternatives are there for making printed reports?
Dozens, in the .net world there are some *excellent* alternatives that are small, fast, easy to distribute, come with C# as the scripting language and are hassle free with a free end user report designer component (I still have a burning hatred at CR from their old policy of charging 10 dollars less per copy (and has to be audited) of the end user designer component for each copy you want to distribute than a full off the shelf retail copy of CR!). I honestly don't understand for a second why any developer would continue to use CR with a plethora of excellent alternatives out there. DevExpress XtraReports is what we settled on (after testing all the biggies) when we joyfully were finally able to kick Crystal Reports to the curb.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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The worst part is, instead of releasing an immediate hot fix to an issue this potentially damaging, they batched it up into a service pack. How many offices burned through how many cases of paper before this got fixed?
Imagine that you are hired to build a bridge over a river. The width of the river increases slightly every day, except when it shrinks. Your budget does not allow for you to use concrete or steel - you can only afford timber and cut stone. Gravity changes from hour to hour, as does the viscosity of air. Your only tools are a hacksaw, a chainsaw, a rubber mallet, and a length of rope. Welcome to my world. -Me explaining my job to an engineer
Based on my prior experience with Crystal Reports over many years I'm actually surprised to hear it was a free service pack and not a pay only update.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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Yes, we all love to hate Crystal Reports, but, sometimes, we are forced to use it at our workplace. Today, one of the users reported an issue when printing reports from the Intranet; they were getting multiple copies. When I investigated, I discovered that the number of copies being printing was the square of the number of copies requested. Request 1, get one; request 2, get 4; request 3, get 9... After much searching, I found a serivce pack to address the issue... but, come on! What developer allowed THAT to slide into a commercial system??? Hopefully, the service pack doesn't break anything else... Tim
How many times have I heard complaints about Crystal reports. Usually from people who don't the have the mental strength to try and understand how it works. Face up to it, if you want to write complex reports with subtle behaviour, you are going to have to use a complicated tool. If you are using a complicated tool, it is going to take some effort to master it. If you are using a complicated tool, there will be lots of room for mistakes. If you want a reporting tool that you can learn in a few hours, lets you do everything with clicks / drag drop, don't bother with Crystal. But don't expect to be able to solve any complex problems either.
rjempo
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Boukh wrote:
why you people hate every thing that works
It works in general. But it has a shipload of issues that is creating problems that is not my fault. I can live with problems that I create myself. I can fix them. But waiting for more than half a year for Business Objects to fix some obscure bugs, IS getting on my mind. The problem is that the alternatives i have found so far isn't advanced enough or easy enough to use.
I used it from early on for quite some time until there were alternatives and it's been interesting to see how a product that was first class an innovative when it was created by the dudes in Vancouver Canada slowly went downhill then after it's first sale to whoever it was it went even deeper and faster downhill then I dumped it and to hear that it's still going downhill under new ownership is quite surprising. They must know the writing is on the wall and privately have made it a legacy product and are just skimping along trying to suck whatever profit then can get out of it before everyone switches to the numerous better alternatives out there.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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How many times have I heard complaints about Crystal reports. Usually from people who don't the have the mental strength to try and understand how it works. Face up to it, if you want to write complex reports with subtle behaviour, you are going to have to use a complicated tool. If you are using a complicated tool, it is going to take some effort to master it. If you are using a complicated tool, there will be lots of room for mistakes. If you want a reporting tool that you can learn in a few hours, lets you do everything with clicks / drag drop, don't bother with Crystal. But don't expect to be able to solve any complex problems either.
rjempo
Dude you are completely off base here. The people that complain the most about it here have long and detailed experience with it for many years. You don't build up this kind of hatred from a lack of understanding how it works, you build it up from predatory licensing practices, horrible support, bugs galore that go unfixed far too long, insane distribution requirements etc etc. I could go on but suffice to say you know not of which you type.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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How many times have I heard complaints about Crystal reports. Usually from people who don't the have the mental strength to try and understand how it works. Face up to it, if you want to write complex reports with subtle behaviour, you are going to have to use a complicated tool. If you are using a complicated tool, it is going to take some effort to master it. If you are using a complicated tool, there will be lots of room for mistakes. If you want a reporting tool that you can learn in a few hours, lets you do everything with clicks / drag drop, don't bother with Crystal. But don't expect to be able to solve any complex problems either.
rjempo
Firrst rule: Simple things should be simple.
We are a big screwed up dysfunctional psychotic happy family - some more screwed up, others more happy, but everybody's psychotic joint venture definition of CP
blog: TDD - the Aha! | Linkify!| FoldWithUs! | sighist -
Pete O'Hanlon wrote:
Crystal Reports sucks
But Crystal Reports is one of the successful reports that i dealed with
I hate that much I wrote my own reporting engine "Emerald".
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I used it from early on for quite some time until there were alternatives and it's been interesting to see how a product that was first class an innovative when it was created by the dudes in Vancouver Canada slowly went downhill then after it's first sale to whoever it was it went even deeper and faster downhill then I dumped it and to hear that it's still going downhill under new ownership is quite surprising. They must know the writing is on the wall and privately have made it a legacy product and are just skimping along trying to suck whatever profit then can get out of it before everyone switches to the numerous better alternatives out there.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
When I joined my company CR was already what was used for printed reports. But we're getting closer and closer to a swap. It's somehow very fitting that the last acquisition of CR was made by SAP :~ X|
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Yes, we all love to hate Crystal Reports, but, sometimes, we are forced to use it at our workplace. Today, one of the users reported an issue when printing reports from the Intranet; they were getting multiple copies. When I investigated, I discovered that the number of copies being printing was the square of the number of copies requested. Request 1, get one; request 2, get 4; request 3, get 9... After much searching, I found a serivce pack to address the issue... but, come on! What developer allowed THAT to slide into a commercial system??? Hopefully, the service pack doesn't break anything else... Tim
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Dozens, in the .net world there are some *excellent* alternatives that are small, fast, easy to distribute, come with C# as the scripting language and are hassle free with a free end user report designer component (I still have a burning hatred at CR from their old policy of charging 10 dollars less per copy (and has to be audited) of the end user designer component for each copy you want to distribute than a full off the shelf retail copy of CR!). I honestly don't understand for a second why any developer would continue to use CR with a plethora of excellent alternatives out there. DevExpress XtraReports is what we settled on (after testing all the biggies) when we joyfully were finally able to kick Crystal Reports to the curb.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
John C wrote:
I honestly don't understand for a second why any developer would continue to use CR with a plethora of excellent alternatives out there
Transforming all existing reports to a new format is not something I'm looking forward to do.
John C wrote:
DevExpress XtraReports is what we settled on
I had a look at them a year or two ago. But then they were lacking a bit in the charting department. I had a quick look at them again yesterday evening, and they seem to have improved. I'm going to check them out in detail today.
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Dozens, in the .net world there are some *excellent* alternatives that are small, fast, easy to distribute, come with C# as the scripting language and are hassle free with a free end user report designer component (I still have a burning hatred at CR from their old policy of charging 10 dollars less per copy (and has to be audited) of the end user designer component for each copy you want to distribute than a full off the shelf retail copy of CR!). I honestly don't understand for a second why any developer would continue to use CR with a plethora of excellent alternatives out there. DevExpress XtraReports is what we settled on (after testing all the biggies) when we joyfully were finally able to kick Crystal Reports to the curb.
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
I'll second that recommendation for XtraReports, tis very easy to use and comes with great export options.
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How many times have I heard complaints about Crystal reports. Usually from people who don't the have the mental strength to try and understand how it works. Face up to it, if you want to write complex reports with subtle behaviour, you are going to have to use a complicated tool. If you are using a complicated tool, it is going to take some effort to master it. If you are using a complicated tool, there will be lots of room for mistakes. If you want a reporting tool that you can learn in a few hours, lets you do everything with clicks / drag drop, don't bother with Crystal. But don't expect to be able to solve any complex problems either.
rjempo
I used to like Crystal Reports, back when it did what it was supposed to. Now, I have used many reporting tools (including Business Objects), and I would say that I do have the mental strength to understand it. What I don't have the patience for is the way it gets in the way of producing simple reports (which is what most people want).
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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How many times have I heard complaints about Crystal reports. Usually from people who don't the have the mental strength to try and understand how it works. Face up to it, if you want to write complex reports with subtle behaviour, you are going to have to use a complicated tool. If you are using a complicated tool, it is going to take some effort to master it. If you are using a complicated tool, there will be lots of room for mistakes. If you want a reporting tool that you can learn in a few hours, lets you do everything with clicks / drag drop, don't bother with Crystal. But don't expect to be able to solve any complex problems either.
rjempo
rjempo wrote:
If you are using a complicated tool, there will be lots of room for mistakes.
The problem is not the mistakes I'm doing. I can fix those. The problem is the mistakes they are doing. I can't fix those. And here's the big problem, neither can they! I'm stuck with one and the same bug (acknowledged as a bug by Business Object) from version 9 to 11.5.
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He's just trying to say stupid things trying to get responses to keep the thread going so he can get his status up.
Current Rant: "Pope Fever!!" http://craptasticnation.blogspot.com/[^]