Crystal Report or others ??

I have a VB app using Access database.


I don't know much about Crystal Report.

I think it is one of the most popular tool to print reports and forms on any kind.

Is this software one of the best and easy to use on the market?

Or do you have another software you think is better to use for printing reports and forms.

Someone suggested ActiveReports from DataDynamics Co .. is that good and solid?

Thanks.

I prefer SQL Reporting Services... It's FREE :)

I've used Arpeggio with ODBC connected backends. Access has very good reporting capabilities.

Crystal Reports would be a good choice for VB6.

We found CRYSTAL to be inadequate for our needs.

We developed our own report engine - reads the "report" object information right from a table in the database.

When a requirement arises that is not handled, being our own code makes it possible for use to implement it. We do multi-column, fixed quadrant, duplex, key and legend, all kinds of tricks.

Developing the engine was actually very simple. Have about 80 report object types, from FONT, BOLD to "print-column-numeric-with-carriage return". We use twip specific placement and everything is perfect.

We've been trying to develop a GUI front-end for designing the reports - right now we have to put the "report objects" into the table manually. But this is really not a big problem either. It's usually a cut/paste from another report anyway.