Crystal Reports - We All Love to Hate
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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.
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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
rjempo wrote:
If CR is so bad, for so many years, why hasn't everyone forgotten about it and moved on to a superior product?
And another reason is that it's given away "free" with Visual Studio - that doesn't mean it's a good fit, just that people get used to it.
Deja View - the feeling that you've seen this post before.
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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
Which version? I think I just heard someone screaming at a printer!!! :omg:
ed ~"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Frank Outlaw.
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Which version? I think I just heard someone screaming at a printer!!! :omg:
ed ~"Watch your thoughts; they become your words. Watch your words they become your actions. Watch your actions; they become your habits. Watch your habits; they become your character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Frank Outlaw.
Problem exists in version 8.0.0.371; fixed in 8.5 SP 2.
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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
rjempo wrote:
If CR is so bad, for so many years, why hasn't everyone forgotten about it and moved on to a superior product?
You know those complex reports you were talking about in your original post? Some of us have hundreds of them in use. And no money or time to re-write them in something better all at once. They're being phased out slowly, as we have time. In the meantime, Crystal crashes and burns on a half a dozen machines each day, losing time and work for the people relying on it. It's a bad situation all around, and listening to people talk about it as though i should just shrug it off doesn't make it better. It's that kind of "piss on your users" attitude that has made Crystal such a PoS... :|
Citizen 20.1.01
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
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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?
In a Visual Basic programming class I took years ago, when the class was assigned to make a report for the sample database, I wrote a report builder that generated RTF code and displayed it in a RichTextBox. For the VB6 inventory program I wrote for the company I work for, I made reports that just sent the necessary formatting to the Printer object. I could have used Crystal Reports (which we do have and use), but that would have just added a dependency to the program.
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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
CR and all it's multitude of ways that it sucks has been discussed here for many years before you came on the scene. You're late to the party and if you have anything meaningful and thoughtful to say have at it.
rjempo wrote:
One explanation is that perhaps creating a sophisticated and flexible report writer is an extremely difficult undertaking
CR is neither at this point, clearly you have not looked at the alternatives out there which makes your jumping in with these arguments a little premature don't you agree?
"The pursuit of excellence is less profitable than the pursuit of bigness, but it can be more satisfying." - David Ogilvy
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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.