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Choosing an Architecture

Printed From: Crystal Reports Book
Category: Crystal Reports for Visual Studio 2005 and Newer
Forum Name: Writing Code
Forum Discription: .NET programming API, report integration
URL: http://www.crystalreportsbook.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=1377
Printed Date: 06 May 2024 at 1:10am


Topic: Choosing an Architecture
Posted By: Lonesome Dev
Subject: Choosing an Architecture
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2007 at 1:23pm
Hi,
 
My boss has asked me to investigate how to incorporate crystal reports into a vb.net 2005 application he is writing. This is a windows form application that would be distributed to various clients. The clients would need to be able to create and edit their own reports. We would supply them with an initial set of generic reports. Any new reports that they created would need to be linked to a data source. The proposal is to create a number of parameterised sql strings that will effectively act as the source for one or more reports.
 
I am getting lost trying to understand the various options. All I can see are trees at the moment. If anyone can direct me to some timber It would be much appreciated!
 
I am particularly concerned with how the end user would create and manage their own reports. This application would be for fairly small businesses who would not be looking to purchase expensive licenses on top of buying our software.
 
Your help would be much appreciated.
Kind Regards
 


Replies:
Posted By: BrianBischof
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2007 at 1:44pm
The easiest way to let users create their own reports is to buy each one a copy of CR XI. You give them the base reports and they tweak them to their hearts desire. However, I'm assuming that by making this post you are looking to save costs and write an app in VB.NET. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

CR has modified their licensing so that you can buy CR XI R2 Developer edition and you can now do dynamic report creating within your application. This is a much cheaper alternative than buying licenses for everyone. The caveat is that this only works via programming code. Thus, your boss would have to write procedures that customize each report. Not what you are looking for. There are no third party applications which let a user modify an existing report because this goes against the CR license. Your boss could write something like this just for your own company, but then he wouldn't have time to do anything else for the next three months except code.

So you really need to buy either CR XI Professional for each person or the Standard edition (cheaper, but limited in database functionality).

Hope this helps.


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Posted By: Lonesome Dev
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2007 at 2:06pm
Hi Brian,
 
Thanks very much for your swift response. I guess that effectively rules out Crystal Reports for this particular application. I read your white paper comparing SSRS and CR and it seems SSRS is out of the question too!
 
Do you know any other possible solutions? The only other suggestion that I have for my boss is to use office applications for reporting. Generally our clients would have excel or word so there should be no extra overhead. I can't help thinking that this would open a whole new can of worms.
 
Thanks once again for your help...my wife has to use the laptop now!
Kind Regards.

Posted By: BrianBischof
Date Posted: 25 Sep 2007 at 2:16pm
Yeah. Office apps are probably your best way to go. MS Access has a nice reporting feature. And like you said, most people are already familiar with Excel. I guess one big reason they are so popular is because they make tasks like this easy for the common person.

Good luck.


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