the pricing of that product has gone throught the roof! what are they smoking in France (Business Objects HQ) ?

Originally posted by:
SBC

Originally posted by:
Richard Dudley

Business Objects bought Crystal Reports. It's all the same company now.


Originally posted by:
BO guy

hi .........i m new to crystal reports. ur comment sounds that if i m using VS.NET, then i m using free licensed version of crystal reports, and every user using that application must b having a lisence too. But what if i deploy my .NET web application not internally but on web server to make it accessable worldwide...........then how can v estimate and limit the number of end users in that case..........when u people talikng about 4 5 concurrent users when u buy one license

waiting for ur help and feed back
thanx



Originally posted by:
shehla javaid

hahahahaha well i cant make it work so i dont know who sucks more, crystal reports or me for not knowing how to use it, although i dont think of myself as a bad developer... :P

Originally posted by:
4nonymous

I don't think that cost would be an issue of that piece of junk actually worked. But since it doesn't, there's no value in paying even a dollar for any aspect of Crystal Reports.

Buy Active Reports or XtraReports

Originally posted by:
Shaun

"Crystal Reports programmer" is an oxymoron.

Originally posted by:
Bob

Good luck with the competitors.....You're in for quite a ride....!!!

Originally posted by:
Chris

If you are developing web-based reports, I strongly suggest LGX Report from Logixml. I am using it for more than a year now and I have been very productive making many reports that were in my wish list for a while.

It is a free reporting server and runs on IIS. In my opinion better than CR. You can download the software from www.freereporting.com.

Originally posted by:
James

Separate from the good/bad about the tool suite itself; what experience are any of you having with Business Objects customer service. We are having long wait times, slow call backs, little escalation, and no technical experience with BO on WebSphere.

Originally posted by:
Derrin

Over the past 10 years I have been using Crystal Reports and I cringe at the thought of using the it for reporting. As a developer, the poor documentation, examples and even the version numbers that the company produces are/is confusing and misleading.

Now my duaghter is becomming a lawyer - So I asked her about suing Business Objects for all the grief and anxiety that this company and its marketing engine has put me and my customers through. She said that their could be grounds for a class ation suit.

Some one should take on these pricks! and make them pay for the grief that they have put developers through.

Microsoft should ramp up their efforts and eliminate the B.O. company.

Rick


Originally posted by:
Rick

I am planning to take a new job a crystal reports developer ; this was not a good site to visist. Let like my job for a while at least

Originally posted by:
yohannes

Very much agreed - Crystal Reports is a good reporting tool, but their support, samples, lack of a good web version, and frequent patches are a major pain. Then the licensing is a HUGE expense for redistributable projects and a big reason not to ever use them.

I've had good luck for web reporting with LGX Reports (from logixml.com), and for simple stuff with manuallly building reports & doing graphs with the Telerik Chart control (from telerik.com).

Thanks for the reference to ActiveReport too. It looks like it may be another good alternative.

Originally posted by:
Mike

Crystal is old school, like some of the others here we've been using tools from LogiXML for over 12 months now (www.logixml.com) We started on the free version and recently moved to the Info product when we wanted dashboards and other advanced features....

Originally posted by:
Akram

Producing graphs with the POS software is an adventure. You change one item and then the chart legend changes, or an axis legend changes, etc. Oh, I wanted to include zero values in a bar graph (tracking inof by the month, so empty months are needed on the report), and call their customer "service" and they send me an "example" report on how to do this. The damn example comes with NO explanation about the code, why it was used, or anything like that.

I think the only way that crustal ever became big was good marketing, and decisions to use it did not involve developers. I hate crustal, I hate it, I hate it.

Originally posted by:
Mike

THANK GOD THERE IS AN OUTLET DISGRUNTLED CRYSTAL REPORTS Users/Developers.

My biggest beef is their support which is not only mostly contracted to people in India but evidently they are bottom of the barrell of what India has to offer.

I spent two weeks on a critical issue for deployment because the idiots wouldn't listen to me. I asked them a key question from the start and should the have bothered to answer would have saved me two weeks of heartache. Instead they shoved some PDF in my face TWICE.

Only after I contacted someone in the U.S. about the issue did an American fellow tell me what the problem was in as little as 30 minutes.

I have since decided to move on to ActiveReports. I am going to convert all my customer's applications and move forward. Life is too short. Don't Screw around with Crystal.

Originally posted by:
Anthony

I have used Crystal, Actuate and now I am playing around the Microsoft's product for reporting. They all are a pain in one form or another.

Originally posted by:
Andrew Wheeler

Just want to repeat mike's famous words "I hate crystal, I hate it, I hate it."

Originally posted by:
Marne

I use CR XI (1) and cannot complain too much. Although there are a "few" things:

- formatting graphs is a pain, not only are the setting you would expect to be in one place spreaded over about 15 places and only reachable when selecting the right object, graphs change when changing settings - argh!

- When I needed support for a tight deadline it took CR support and sales employees (about 5 different people) some 1,5 month to find out what kind of support I was entitled to. Until that time my problem had been already escalatet! So the licensing is not just confusing for developers, even sales doesn't have a clue how to explain and what it includes.

There is too much focus on the looks, to less on the structure of the software/licensing and company. Get ur act together BO!

Originally posted by:
Mike

Check it out

http://www.izenda.com

We've designed it with many of the product level complaints people have with CR in mind.

Originally posted by:
Sanjay Bhatia

I had to evaluate a few contemporary reporting solutions for our needs.

Its worth noting that our application would be distributed to several hospitals in Victoria - Australia (and perhaps elsewhere in Australia too).

I found out that the VS.NET component of Crystal Reports has a bandwidth restriction.

From what I read here (and elsewhere) we would have to force the hospitals that are using our application to buy a license of Crystal Reports.

It's 1000$ for a Developer edition license - but if that has to be done for every hospital - then its exorbitant!

I too feel that Crystal reports is a trap many people fall into. It’s not suitable for everyone's reporting needs. Don't use it because it's seemingly the most popular reporting solution.


Originally posted by:
Paras Jethwani

I contacted CR online support for help producing a scatter chart. Apparently, after a bit of discussion, they decided it was out of their scope and I would have to pay one of their "experts" to produce a workaround. My reply to this suggestion is below:

"
I find it incredible that creating a scatter chart with multiple series in CR "may be possible to do, but would have a fairly complex and lengthy work around".

There is so much hype on your website and in your advertisements about the power of your product and yet it doesn't even do something that a 12 year-old would need to do for their high-school science homework.

CR is evidently not a very friendly product for scientists and engineers. I have produced similar graphs in Excel and Access, and yet, to quote your website, "the world's leading reporting tool" cannot do the same!

I also find it derisory that you would like me to pay for this workaround when I have already paid for your product as part of my Visual Studio.Net product bundle.

Thanks for nothing. Just like your website, your help files, your "online support centre", and your support, you are all style and no substance. I have only been able to find one paragraph of support for producing scatter charts and it is repeated in every bit of your help literature. It provides no help whatsoever except a virtual dictionary definition of what a scatter chart is, which is both patronising and useless!

"

Now I have vented my anger I feel better - but I still don't have the report I was after. There must be 12 year olds all over the world laughing ...

Originally posted by:
Ben G

Because it's a tall glass of urine

Originally posted by:
The Captain

I used to work in Business Objects support and can understand the fury of these customers. They do not invest in their support staff and discourage knowledge sharing and personal initiative. The company ethic is all about closing support cases as quickly as possible with no regard for customer satisfaction (In fact I remember managers closing loads of cases just before Christmas, so that they would meet their goals and get their bonuses, even though the customers didn't consider the cases closed.). It is a shame because I believe their products are very good on the whole, even if they are littered with bugs.

Microsoft will eat them up within the next five years I imagine.

Originally posted by:
Last Cry

Amen on the graphing problems.

I myself was new to crystal and hand the task of creating a bar chart. A bar chart i tell you, something that could be done by a 7 year old in excel with about 3 mouse clicks. But no, give it to crystal and it decides it wants to re arrange all my data in the x axis so i have ranges in alpha numeric order (0-5, 11-20, 20+, 6-10)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What joy to be told this is too complicated for us, the experts will need to create a work around!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I could draw one with a pencil in 6 seconds. How stupid do they think we are. I've not even looked into the licensing issues yet.

My manager asked me to see if it could meet our solutions needs, my reply to him - It depends if your needs are along the line of having your ribs pulled out through your nostrils.
I may start looking into the options outlined in this thread which by the way is an extremely good thread as it seems a lot of crapstal users need to vent their frustrations. Keep it going so I've got something to read in between sessions of bashing my head on the keyboard to try and get a histogram to work.

Originally posted by:
Chrissyboy

I wanted to create a Dashboard using CR. I was looking around for some help on google, after having spent four days to get a simple report grouped by City to work due to the crappy documentation that CR dishes out. Thanks a ton chaps for telling me its futile to try using this product. BO had come over to have a chat with me, but after going through this thread I am not too sure I want to meet them ever! They were up in arms in the previous organistation as well against BO .. the tool is slow and licensing policies are extremely stiff and cumbersome. Support is the last thing you get from these people!!

Originally posted by:
Andy

STAY AWAY FROM ACTIVE REPORTS!. I just moved to CR v11 and it's night and day difference. Active reports has one very serious problem. If your end users are using sempron processors. It will take 5 to ten minutes to run a 3 or 4 page report. Sure everything looks great on the test or dev pc. But good luck on the outside world. Plus trying to exit out of the active reports designer during this long period on a sempron crashes the whole application include your VB 6.0 ide if you try to exit.

Originally posted by:
Rudy

At least the ActiveReports people are prompt in providing feedback and the documentation though leaky and incorrect in some places, gives a good toehold. That plus the fact that it is available for a free demo download and licensing the stuff is very simple - its a per Developer license! You don't need to be a PhD in documentation unlike the case with CR!!

Originally posted by:
Andy

Hi,
I don't undestand liceanse arangment .
I've got Vs2005 profesional and i don't know if can sell desktop aplication with crystal reports included in Vs2005

Originally posted by:
bob

I've been forced to deal with Crystal for the last 5 years. Everything from legacy vb 6.0 to now .NET. They make the simplest simplest things so g** d** difficult I would like to maim anyone even indirectly related to whoever spawned this devil feast...

I hate Crystal, I hate it, I hate it!

Originally posted by:
theotherfeller

Our apps crash randomly.  For some the first thime they fire CR.  For others maybe the 20th.  For some it crashes everyday at the same place.  We upgraded from 8.5 to 11 as there appeared to be some issues with so-called multi-threading.

V11 is no better.  I created a tiny app for testing.  You run two copies.  Examine a report in first (not even logging in a=ro accessing the database), then examine any report on the second.  Now examine any report on the first.  Either the app disappears (its memory and registers totally trashed) or it disappears in a few minutes.

We have bene having these problems since v5... and have been upgrading and upgrading.  If anything, the problme is getting worse and worse.

I also note that the problem is worse if you use any com object in your app.... maybe thats a clue.

I reported thsi again.  Now I get someone in India that first reclassifies this bug as non-severe and then asks me 10 questions whcih I have already answered, if they had bothered to open up teh zip with the sampe, app and comments....   Aaarrghhh.

I would switch to something else, but the investment in reports is rather large... 140+ reports

Its amazing how many websites come up when one searches for "I hate crystal reports".  My experience echoes everything mentioned here.  Crystal Reports is the single worst piece of third party software I have ever used.  I tried writing some simple C# code to move a line object at runtime.  Of course Crystal Reports only supports vertical or horizontal lines, not diagonal lines.  So my C# code attempted to move one endpoint then the other endpoint -- but of course it throws a huge exception after you move one endpoint because the line is no longer horizontal or vertical.  Of course the very next line of my code would move the other endpoint!

And the real kicker is what their tech support suggested.  Oh don't use a line object, use a box object.  So now I use a box object and make it very narrow so it looks like a line.  This is just the tip of the iceberg of the never ending list of problems with Crystal Reports.

crystal reports 11 includes merge modules which allows deploying your applications without installing CR on remote servers.

http://support.businessobjects.com/communityCS/TechnicalPapers/crxi_net_deployment.pdf

Natan - so has every other version since 8.5, BUT you may still need a license to run the reports.

I found with legacy VB6/Crystal 9 code that using .dsr's are a LOT more stable than .rpt. However, I echo all of the above negative sentiments. If you're starting out on reporting, stay well away from CR.

Perahps if MS take over BO, they'll be honest and call themselves BS :o)

The largest free reporting community in the world is at www.freereporting.com.  This is from the folks at LogiXML.  If you want to upgrade to their paid product Logi Info (its 6K per CPU, unlimited users) go to www.logixml.com.   We started on the free product and moved to Logi Info after about 18 months.  From my experience Logi Info is comparable to a Cognos or BO XI

i think crystal reports is the most undocumented software i have ever used.

ohhhhhh this other day i got an error that says "Unexpected Termination" how helpful

If Business Objects hasn't been a sour note of complicated licensing,  SAP will make their current licensing seem like reading Dr. Suess.

SAP has made our team start gearing up to transfer all of our Crystal product to another vendor, still undetermined.  

If any of you have a good alternative I should review...suggestions welcome.

i feel everyones pain, boss purchased a crystal license 11.5, spent more time trying to get it to work then developing our product. deployment is a *** with the RDC. products no better than cr 5. and the support from the BO team is a joke.

hehe angry coder used to be the best place for a good crystal bashing to vent some anger. oh well back to trying to get these POS merge mogules for the rdc to deploy on a client pc and not get a license invalid.

will refuse any other contract where a company uses BO.

F*** Crystal Reports.  That is all.

i want to learn about crystal report 8.5 to connect with vb 6.0 ( back access) if you have any information or e-book so please send me

I have been programming since 1979. Crystal Reports is by far the worst product to use. IT SUXXXXXX!!!!!

With all the alternatives out there now, (ASPX.Net, SQL Server Reporting Services) whoever uses Crystal Reports DESERVES IT!!!!!

When it comes to presenting data for pros, we all know Crystal Reports is at the bottom of the barrel. When is management going to wise up?????

Dilbert, come here. We need you!

Sign me up for that class action lawsuit!

Well... I guess I'll add my rant here too. I'm using Crystal Reports Server XI. I'm about to shoot myself. I've been developing software for 10 years. My last job was a systems architect for an ERP application, so I consider myself very competent when it comes to software. However, CR is such a huge headache. Unfortunately, I'm about to inform my client that they screwed up when they bought this $10,000 piece of crap. They should've consulted me BEFORE buying it.

My next solution is to scrap CR and begin working with SQL Server Reporting Services. If you're reading this and considering buying CR. PLEASE save yourself lots of misery and run far, far away.

Besides, France only produces quality wine and cheese... not software. ;-)

All these negative comments about CR are well-placed. Its a piece of junk that just doesn't understand Developers. I also donlt believe that a reporting tool should mandate implementation of a particular database, as is the case with SQL Server Reporting Services. That's blackmail. The only reporting tool I have ever used that "gets it" (as someonelse put it) on all fronts is ActiveReports. AR was created for the VS/VS.Net developer and is a pure joy to work with - there's nothing you can't do with it and it has a **real** royalty-free developer license.

Has anyone tried Tableau  www.tableausoftware.com

I have been working with Crystal reports for about 15 years and I hate it.  If they could simply make it WYSIWYG I may feel differently.

I have been working with Crystal reports for about 15 years and I hate it.  If they could simply make it WYSIWYG I may feel differently.

Amazing. I'm going to start charging a premium for any work that has any CR components.

http://technicalsupport.businessobjects.com/cs/forums/thread/467.aspx and if the moon is blue then while standing on the left foot shift to the right foot while touching the nose....

Folks, there are better ways...

8 years!!! damn that crystal company!! still do not know why some of my reports are not working the first time but if i create them again from scratch then it works....just so you know subreports are really a pain to link to a point that you have to do one again from scratch!!!