Report Writer Showdown

[*NightSkull]

Greetings to one and all!

I am just a new hire in a new company. I have been using Visual Basic ever since version 3. And been using Crystal Reports ever since then. The scenario is that my company is under budget, they say Crystal 8 is too expensive for an enterprise development. They're either planning to buy other report writers or use VB6's Data Report Writer. I haven't tried other report writers as well as VB6's.

I would like to get each and everyone's opinion regarding VB6's Report writer VS. Crystal or other report writers. I'm sure this will also help those who are starting out with report writers.

Thank you for your replies.

[BruceG]

I've been sticking with Crystal (just the version that comes with VB6, which is the same one as VB5). I went thru a brief tutorial on the VB6 Data Report Designer, and it seemed easy enough to use, but it also seems to be tied to the Data Environment Designer nonsense; I don't know enough about it to truly give a point-by-point comparison. The general concensus seems to be that the VB report writer is LESS powerful/flexible than Crystal. Your company may also want to check into the 3rd party report writer that always advertises in VBPJ ("Active Reports", or whatever).

[gfk]

Originally posted by BruceG
I've been sticking with Crystal (just the version that comes with VB6, which is the same one as VB5

Erm... I'm using VB6 SP3 and I don't seem to have Crystal Reports. Where should I be looking?

the data report is not tied to data enviroment at all, it is just easier to design the reports using de and when finished directly sending recordsets to the reports (filtered, sorted ....).

all this did not mean, that i think the data report is a
grear tool, but it works (somehow). i found ActiveReports (www.datadynamics.com) a decent report writer.

[BruceG]

To gfk:
Unlike previous versions of VB, Crystal does not install automatically with VB6. On the VB6 CD, you should find a directory somewhere called "CrysRep". Run the setup from there. It will allow you to get at CR thru the VB Add-Ins menu, but won't create a Start _> Programs menu item for it. (You can of course create a desktop shortcut for it.)

[*NightSkull]

I did what BruceG said about checking third parties, and checked their rankings, too bad Crystal Reports 8 once again ranked no. 1! There's a rumor, however, that Microsoft and Seagate will have a "joint" effort in making a report writer to be bundled with VB7.

By the way BruceG, isn't the bundle version with VB is I think still version 4. something?

Thanks guys for your feedback, and I hope to hear from the others as well. So that I may be able to evaluate whether the Data Report Writer is worth the study since we're going to use complex tables.

This place is COOL!

[Johannes Schade]

Dear Colleagues
Microsoft Data Report Designer is not bad. I had two problems with it. I solved the first one, but not the second.
(1)Data Reports cannot analyse simple SELECT SQL's with more than one JOIN, but you get around it by using Views. Also use TOP eg:
strSQL = "IF EXISTS (SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.VIEWS " _
& " WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'TmpView')" _
& " DROP VIEW TmpView"
myCon.Execute strSQL
strSQL = "CREATE VIEW TmpView AS " _
& "SELECT TOP 10000 Name,Surname,Phone," _
& "CompanyName,ShortCpyName,Department,City " _
& "FROM Contacts " _
& "INNER JOIN Customers ON Contacts.AutoCust=Customers.AutoCust " _
& "WHERE Contacts.Type = 'P' AND Contacts.Obsolete=0 " _
& "AND Country='Botswana' " _
& "ORDER BY CompanyName,Department"
(2) I cannot get Data Reports to print in landscape format. Microsoft Article Q198901 "Sample: Pageset.exe Programmatically Changes Default Printer Orientation" treats this issue (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/bugs/) but I never understood how to use "setup.exe".
Best regards, Johannes

[BruceG]

Yes, the Crystal Reports version that is bundled with VB6 is version 4.6. Traditionally, the versions of Crystal Reports that came with VB were at least one (if not more) version behind the commercial version of CR available at the time. Still, I have been able to do what I needed to do with the bundled version.