Looking for a Crystal Reports alternative...
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
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I have been using DevExpress for the past 5 years and can attest to the high quality of their development tools, especially the reporting bits. :thumbsup: Further, as you probably know already, there is a huge knowledge base of resources/training material available for their components, which is really important if your client will be 'hands-on' with it. Firstly, I am not a robot! I've used Crystal Reports/Crytal Decisions/Business Objects for over 23 years now. It's great for desktop applications, but the web components suck. X| Secondly, I've tried a few other DIY reporting tools/dashboard builders (asprunner.net, SAP, SSRS, etc.) over the years but they all had shortcomings or wouldn't work for cloud solutions. I'm now using DevExpress components in both desktop and web-based reporting projects and couldn't be happier. Reports are designed against a spreadsheet and the datasource is swapped at runtime to a datatable. We haven't tried the runtime report designer yet as our customers have no desire to do anything like that. After singing their praises, let me also list the cons: 0: Fairly expensive, however it's a one-time fee. (unless you want updates after the first year) 1: The components are 'weighty' with interdependencies...it will add noticeable time to startups/compiles during your debugging sessions. Overall, it's a matter of getting what you pay for. I bought the whole suite and have mostly focused on using the reporting (grids, pivots, reports, charts) components. It has already paid for itself many times over. :)
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Quick too - I just received an email notifying me that the support ticket had been raised! That's 28 hours after I got the response fixing the problem. :-D
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Microsoft Report Builder doesn't look very state of the art and it doesn't have a cloud native counterpart. It's probably better than Crystal Reports, but I'd still prefer a more modern solution.
Sanjay K. Gupta wrote:
If your reports are simple, you can render the report in html and convert it into pdf using ITextSharp library.
I've tried HTML to PDF in the past and I hate it. HTML simply doesn't know pages or A4 (or A* for that matter) format. A real pain to get right and very limited in regards to headers, footers, fitting a page, etc. Besides, my client could never use something like that, and that's a requirement.
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Please stay away from MS reports and the SSRS. It's even bigger mess than CR(and that says a LOT!), but without CR many futures.
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How about SSRS? Sure you know about it, just in case - [What is SQL Server Reporting Services - SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) | Microsoft Learn](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/reporting-services/create-deploy-and-manage-mobile-and-paginated-reports)
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It's almost out of support. No new futures from years. Doesn't work good with invoice-type documents with a lot of logic.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
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What you need, is a Crystal Reports, that can hold tables. A Crystal Reports that the client can code in a widely used scripting language. You need a report generator that is has a free runtime. And MS Access did not cross your mind? There's a lot of courses teaching MS Access, it is ubiquitous. It does reporting and can hold the data it is basing the reports on too. Exporting to MS Word and PDF is free. That works for everyone who has a Windows-license, just Linux users miss out here.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
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No recommendation - I used SSRS in my day but I have to laugh, you think your user (power or not) is going to create or modify reports. Never happened in 30+ years of building solutions.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity - RAH I'm old. I know stuff - JSOP
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
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DevExpress' report designer is amazing but it seems like you have to write a WinForm app that wraps it as from what I'm reading, they don't have a separate stand-alone designer anymore. But the post I was reading is five years old. Still, you'd think they would provide something.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
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Some years since I used it and I haven't kept up to date as the project was pulled, but I used Jasper Reports in the past with some success. Not sure if it fits what you want but it runs on its own server (so can be cloud hosted) and doesn't tie itself to any particular back-end. Just a thought!
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What you need, is a Crystal Reports, that can hold tables. A Crystal Reports that the client can code in a widely used scripting language. You need a report generator that is has a free runtime. And MS Access did not cross your mind? There's a lot of courses teaching MS Access, it is ubiquitous. It does reporting and can hold the data it is basing the reports on too. Exporting to MS Word and PDF is free. That works for everyone who has a Windows-license, just Linux users miss out here.
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
MS Access did not cross your mind?
MS Access never crosses my mind to be honest :~
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
Take a look at DataFlex Reports which from usage persective is quite similar to Crystal Reports. See this link
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
I'm using Bolt.:suss: This is made by Syncfusion. So far I am happy with it. The main issue with a reporting tool is that you are locked in. A report created in one tool doesn't work in another.:mad:
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
I was in the same situation as you. I ended up making my own solution. The user can create new reports and decide who has the right to see them. The internal test demo is at https://www.mymetric.net:444/
(www.mymetric.net is under construction)
If you have additional questions, let me know igor.laktic@gmail.com. -
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
MS Access did not cross your mind?
MS Access never crosses my mind to be honest :~
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
I have been using Crystal Reports for 20 years of developing desktop applications. I really liked the ability to create just about any type of report I needed and the ability to keep the report definitions separate from the application. However, since it is COM based, .Net 6 forced me to look for an alternative. I am currently testing Telerik Reporting. Like Crystal Reports, it has a stand-alone designer (as well as a VS extension). Also, like Crystal Reports, it allows me to keep the report definitions separate from the application allowing me to simply distribute TRDP files when reports change. It does an OK job on converting your existing RPT files to TRDP format. The interface is not as user friendly as CR but I'm getting used to it.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
You should try FastReport it's amazing, I switched to it about 10 years ago.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
We are updating an app with 120 CR reports to a web app. Progress (formally Telerik) makes a viable solution. It is also capable of importing simple CR reports. Their support is rather good. Depending on the option purchased, they have immediate phone support. We are testing Progress, DevExpress, Grapevine, and a homegrown solution. DevExpress has good support. I haven't tried Grapevine's. Even old versions of CR (8.5) have conditional formatted abilities that none of the current solutions offer. An example is splitting a "section" into A,B,C, etc. with each having its own logic. Let us know what you decide, if you don't mind.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
Telerik Reporting => .NET Reporting - Core, Blazor, WPF, Angular | Telerik Reporting[^] - Native Report Viewers for all platforms like WPF, Winforms, Blazor, etc. - Fantastic HTML5 ReportViewer for everything else, which includes a powerful REST service that is a drop in for your web project (just add a 5 line controller and a DLL) - Standalone desktop Report Designer - Visual Studio Report Designer (but only useful if you're going the old school PITA C#-only reports) - Web Report Designer that can be embedded in your application - Report Server, which is a prebuilt one-stop shop if you do not want to have build an application aroud the viewers. It has user management, data management, etc [full disclosure, I work for Progress... but I have also tried many other Reporting solutions and this is still the best]
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
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What an interesting thread. I investigated these technologies many years ago and am surprised by how little has changed based on the responses provided. After thinking through why, I speculate that the only two potential reasons are that either the solution space has been perfected OR the demand for the service was waned. Based on the responses to this thread, I don't think it is because it has been perfected. It having waned makes perfect sense since there are far fewer places where anyone needs or wants paper. But clearly you found a few. Thinking through how I would solve those scenarios without using a hated report writer, I might create a domain specific solution if applicable. Have you considered a document editor, such as MS word, that either supports templating out of the gate, provides an "addin" infrastructure where you can perform your own template application, or uses a file format that can easily be modified programmatically to insert data from the source into template fields. Modifying and printing a document where the format can be changed by the author using tools they already know how to use might be appreciated. Of course this ignores the entire specification of the datasets the reports are run against. But if those are fixed or can be controlled in another manner, then this might work out.
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
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Hauled in a new client last week and they're using Crystal Reports. Needless to say, I'm not to happy about that. Luckily, he only has a few reports and he's willing to switch if I come up with a good alternative. The problem is, I don't have any. Looking for lists of alternatives gives me stuff like Power BI, Tableau and Qlick, which are BI tools and not report generators. What I need is a report designer that my client can use to create or modify some reports. I need stuff like invoices and packing slips, one or two A4 pages. Preferably something that also works in the cloud (not the editor, but generating the reports from code). I've seen DevExpress, but I can't really figure out if they have a stand-alone report editor. And because it comes with lots of components, it's quite expensive (the customer, not I, will be paying for the license). Also looking at List & Label, which looks promising. Any experiences with these tools, or other recommendations?
Best, Sander Azure DevOps Succinctly (free eBook) Azure Serverless Succinctly (free eBook) Migrating Apps to the Cloud with Azure arrgh.js - Bringing LINQ to JavaScript
if you want to convert to something easy to use i would use SSRS with Sql Server Report Builder. I have implemented the reports for several clients into web applications. the report builder can connect to the web based apis and push and pull from the report server.
Shaun
