Crystal Reports - We All Love to Hate
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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/[^]
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I can't remember if you were part of some of the previous posts with this Boukh guy. He is making random dumb posts to get his status increased. But he is an idiot.
Current Rant: "Pope Fever!!" http://craptasticnation.blogspot.com/[^]
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Please do not reply to Boukh. He is making small pointless posts to up his status.
Current Rant: "Pope Fever!!" http://craptasticnation.blogspot.com/[^]
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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
Hey dude, don't call me dude. I'm sure you can safely state that you have vast experience, but I'm not sure how you can speak of everyone else (including me)? I have to say that this debate is somewhat paradoxical. If CR is so bad, for so many years, why hasn't everyone forgotten about it and moved on to a superior product? One explanation is that perhaps creating a sophisticated and flexible report writer is an extremely difficult undertaking (I haven't tried myself). And hence, prone to be expensive, complicated to use, and buggy. "Perfection is spelled p-a-r-a-l-y-s-i-s" - Somebody or Other.
rjempo
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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.
Yeh, lots of room for mistakes on both sides. Why don't you change report writers? There must be something better out there. 1. Active reports. Nice .NET integration, but wasn't bug free and not as flexible as CR. 2. Oracle reports. Some very cool ideas, but an 80's designer, and oh yeh you need Oracle. 3. MS Access. Chuckle.
rjempo
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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
We have had very little problems with SSRS, and I have personally convinced more than one Customer to go to SSRS from Crystal. Took me about 70 hours of debugging to find out which dll's to deploy with the "free" Crystal Viewer in Crystal 8.5, then its not free anymore, its VERY expensive... No matter what SSRS costs, its cheaper than Crystal. Cost of Ownership (fixing it when it falls over) of Crystal has been a big topic for our Customers... And yes Crystal did leave scars... :-D I'd be surprised if Crystal is in business for much longer...
____________________________________________________________ Be brave little warrior, be VERY brave
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Yeh, lots of room for mistakes on both sides. Why don't you change report writers? There must be something better out there. 1. Active reports. Nice .NET integration, but wasn't bug free and not as flexible as CR. 2. Oracle reports. Some very cool ideas, but an 80's designer, and oh yeh you need Oracle. 3. MS Access. Chuckle.
rjempo
rjempo wrote:
Why don't you change report writers?
I have been looking into that, but the dealbreaker for us is usually the charting capabilities and rewriting all the reports to a new format is nothing I'm looking forward to. We're having Oracle db at the moment and I have been in contact with them about reports. But their solutions tend to be very bulky and less than compatible with dotnet. But I'll have a look at Active reports though.