Crystal Reports Liensing Question

[WarrenW]

I need to get a reporting control for VB that is better that the one included with it. I went to the site for Crystal Reports. I'm trying to understand the licensing for it.

Their site states a license is needed for each report designer. What if I am designing the reports myself and am going to distribute my program to several others to print those reports? If the end user does not need to design their own reports, I do not need to get more licenses other than the standard one for $199?

Thanks!

[RobDog888]

Contact crystal's customer serice and let us know too.

[brucevde]

You need at least the Developer edition to integrate your reports with Visual Basic or other programming languages. This is regardless of whether or not your customers have their own licensed copy of Crystal.

If your customers already have a licensed copy you could probably get away with using the Standard edition. From within VB you could "Shell" out to Crystal to run reports.

[RobDog888]

I have the developer version. I export out to pdf files and view
in Acrobat Reader. Sometimes I use the Crystal Report Viewer
control. Is this ok for the clients to use like this without any licenses?

[brucevde]

Yes. The Viewer control and all its functionality (exporting reports to PDF, Word, Email) is part of the Crystal Runtime. Your clients do not need any special licenses.

The Developer edition gives you the license to package the necessary Crystal Report Runtime files with your applications. Your clients cannot create/design reports using the runtime files, they can only view/print the reports created by you.

[RobDog888]

Thanks, brucevde.

Also, I didnt mean to piggyback on your thread WarrenW, but it
was kind of relevant to the thread.