We have a newly documented feature request, from sales and support, to integrate Crystal Reports into our LAMP product. (It's more like LAPP, really, with Postgres and PHP.)
I have to admit, although I've heard about it from time to time, I've never even seen Crystal Reports in the wild. But the buzz is that it will help sales tremendously if we can support it.
So the question is about what we can do to satisfy the request. Are there APIs and SDKs, protocols and conventions we can use to get tight with Crystal Reports?
I'm not sure about the protocols and conventions, but there are indeed APIs and SDKs available for Crystal Reports, both for web app and windows app usage. I've been using Crystal Reports with my apps for a decade now, and generally it integrates pretty well.
http://www.sdn.sap.com/irj/boc/crystalreports-sdk
You can get a free 30 trial of Crystal Reports 2008 here. If you want to deploy things, you may need the Developer Advantage licensing.
Related
I'm new to Crystal Reports 2011. Years ago, I used a report writer that had a report definition GUI. It also had a report viewer exe. I was able to distribute these report definition files and the viewer was able to access data in REAL-TIME. An ODBC connection was required for each user but it was simple to set-up given that I only have 5 users. Life was good. It was a simple solution. What's more it was cheap.
Is this possible with Crsytal Reports 2011 without purchasing the server product? I downloaded crystal viewer but I was surprised to find out that this required me to embed the data within the report (no real-time access). It appears I have 2 options. Purchase Crystal Report Server or do some custom development in .net. Both opinions appear to be overkill for my needs.
What are my options? Does SAP have a solution for small companies that don't want to purchase Crystal Server?
Thanks,
Wayne
I am no Crystal licensing expert, but maybe this will help.
Unless they have changed the licensing from Crystal 2008, then I think you are out of luck. As I recall, there are only two ways to share reports created with the desktop products (2008 or 2011) - you can purchase the server, or purchase a separate desktop license for each user.
The Crystal bundled with Visual Studio has most of the features, and it allows you to share reports on a web site. The server runtime limited to three simultaneous users, so it's not great for a high volume situation.
I'm currently evaluating the main FOSS report generators. One of the features I'm looking for is the ability to manipulate the presentation of data when the report is presented on the browser:
Resort the results
Reorder columns
Regroup the results
Filter the data
The idea is to let the users play with the results presented to them, without having to create a new report or modify the underlying query. So:
Does any of the FOSS versions support such features? (I know some commercial versions do, but at this point it's not what I'm looking for)
If (#1 == false), are there any side open-source projects that provide such features?
Would love to get answers regarding either BIRT, JasperReport of Pentaho.
Actually. I did some similar research and couldn't find any software doing true ad hoc reports. OpenReports used to be a good enough thing, but it seems discontinued. What Jasper and birt report servers offer (in the oss version) is more of a reporting template repository and some scheduling / automatic reports. For the ad hoc features you have to get the paid version.
BIRT has a community edition simple report server sample called BIRT Runtime that you can deploy on Tomcat.
However as a web application, its functionality is not comparable to JasperReports Server.
Actuate however, does provide a flagship commercial BIRT Report Server.
OpenReports have some ajax functionalities on web reporting. I am pretty sure that you can use JSF + Jasper Reports to generate a dynamic web report as well.
hope this helps
My employer is considering migrating our e1 reporting from crystal reports 10 to another solution.
I want to use jasper server and I was wondering if there is a standard migration path or standard report package that we could use to make the task easier/faster. Also, any experience shared about creating the user objects for jasper business intelligence portal would be appreciated.
It is interesting for my employer too.
I researched a lot about it, it seems there is no way to do achieve this in a (semi) automatic approach.
I'm currently working in my own Report Generator, to replace Crystal Reports in my company.
Let me know it it interest you.
I want design and use reports for my .NET windows application. I use Crystal Reports to design reports, but Crystal Reports is very slow when my report shows.
What is the best software to design and view reports for .NET application?
I'm looking for design-time software and not runtime reporting tools.
The fact that your report displays slowly has nothing to do with the ease of use, at design or runtime, of a reporting tool.
You should look at what indexes are present and whether you can simplify the underlying data query.
The 'best' anything depends somewhat on your requirements.
That all said, I personally prefer Active Reports over Crystal.
Please take a look at Windward Reports (I'm the CTO at Windward). With Windward you design the reports in Microsoft Word, Excel, or PowerPoint so layout/formatting is very fast & easy. And because you can place the tags for the data anywhere, it gives you the ability to do things that Crystal, SSRS, etc. find difficulty to impossible.
As to performance issues, there are some good general rules of thumb at How to Turbo-Charge your Report Speed.
thanks - dave
I've heard of "Crystal Reports" for years, but I'm really confused why a small ActiveX type of component that just displays and prints out data from databases (does it?) should be considered a whole product within the VS suite of products.
Is it something better, like something for Windows Server that lets you generate report server-side as PDFs or similar which is why its considered so important?
Enlighten me.
Crystal Reports is a very robust (and in many developers' opinions, complicated and painful) tool to build complex reports. It's much more than simply printing what's in the database - taking relational data and transforming it into massive corporate reports with hundreds or thousands of conditions is very time-consuming and difficult. For example, what if the report needs to have product summary sections which can be formatted completely differently based on the qualities or attributes of the product? CR has a scripting model that permits pretty much any transformation imaginable.
To replace Crystal Reports with something you seem to be imagining, would require a data transformation engine; an end-user-friendly UI to write transformation rules and design reports; and a presentation engine to format the reports in a print-friendly way. That definitely sounds like a full-fledged product to me.
The worst thing about CR is that there isn't anything better at what it does.
If what you want to do is what it "likes" to do--dump data from the DB into a formatted page--it's dead simple. If you're willing to tolerate pain & frustration, you can make it do all sorts of fancy things.
It's definitely more than just "an ActiveX control".
It's a whole product because it is supplied as such by the developer, and is installed only optionally. It enables support for Crystal Report files.
And no, it's not a small ActiveX type of component. It comes with a full-fledged report designer and runtime component and is a complete report solution, much like SSRS (SQL Server Report Services, or something - is that what you meant with the thing for Windows Server?). Have look at their web page for more information.
The Crystal Reports that come with Visual Studio are a 'lite' version of the suite of products , see this page for comparison of features between the full and lite versions of 2008
You should try Stimulsoft Reports.Net its better than CR.NET.In this solution there are no ActiveX involved and no merge module and runtimes....
One of the cool things they added was support for binding to .NET and other data providers. This company has been bought by so many companies in the past it has really hurt the product IMO.
Crystal Report is a third part "Reprot Creation" tool.
This comes as build-in with Visual Studio IDE, and using this tool you can create reports in your application.
Its a reporting tool that has a stand alone application for generating reports or reports can be integrated into a .net application.