Looking for a Crystal Reports alternative...
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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.
MS Access is fantastic as a stand-alone reporting tool, and even decent as a front-end GUI for a MySQL back-end (Access has been very good to me and my odd-shaped career), but it was never designed to run as a server. Also, Microsoft really, really hates it when you do it anyway. After searching for alternatives to the previously mentioned heresy, I noticed that if the commercial Reporting product required Java, it was a proprietary fork of Jasper Reports. Ultimately, we ended up rolling our own with node, a smattering of npm modules and a whole lot of pounding forehead to keyboard. The WordprocessingML spec is definitely taking up far too much real estate in my brain that could be otherwise used for more worthwhile things like cat videos and dread puns.
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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
Tibco Jasper Reports. Its java, there are open source community versions (server or studio), and as far as throughput goes it handles large amount of data way better than Crystal Reports.
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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
Sander, I did a project a little while ago now, that needed a similar thing. After much flitting around we settled on Bold Reports from Syncfusion.. BUT with a bit of a twist. We realised that we could use the original Microsoft Reports Designer tool used to create reports for Report Server (Rather than the Bold Reports tool, which at the time was still quite flaky and buggy), then use the "bold reports stand alone assembly" to load those report files, and programmatically combine them with our own data at run time. Hit me up off piste (You can find my contact details in any of the Succinctly Series books I've written ;-) ) if your interested, I've probably still got some sample code somewhere. Shawty
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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
Sorry for the late reply but I really like ActiveReports from GrapeCity. I don't think I saw that mentioned by others. ActiveReports[^]
