Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Hmm - time to answer my own postings :) Mark Derricutt wrote: This is a worry. Some add on third party things don't keep up with the play. Mark didn't you say earlier you couldn't get this to install? In this case it was I that didn't keep up with the play and installing the latest release of RBPro :) Mark --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
For what it's worth, I have just evaluated (mostly) Seagate Info 7. In the process I had a look at Report Builder Pro. Info includes Seagate Report Designer (formelly Crystal Reports) as well as many other designers. The only comparison that can be made between RB Pro (or non pro) is in the designer and vcl components. For designer, SRD wins easily - allthough it has some annoying 'features' and is not allways exactly wysiwyg. RP Pro wins in the VCL department but then it has really cause without it's vcl it would not work. Feature wise, they are fairly even. My conclusions are prettry straight forward - use RB Pro if your a programmer and want light weight reports and like lots of coding. Use Info or just Seagate Reports if you are more user orientated and want performance and scalability. (Info provides server based reporting with too many features to mention here). All the people here who say that Crystal is slow have obviously not done any serious C/S work because all crystal does is run a query. If you write lousy queries then it doesn't matter what tool you use - performance will be bad. Since Crystal 5 (maybe earlier) you have been able to use stored procedures or user entered queries. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
RE: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Russell wrote This reply is from a pragmatic Crystal Reports user not from someone who knows Crystal internals well. I'm using the Crystal Reports Print Engine 16 from a D1 application and some reports requiring a date range or name of person it brings back all records to the client pc for filtering. If there is a smarter way to use the CRPE I'd would welcome insight. There are many areas to evaluate something like CR. Examples: prior investment, cost of changing, export ability, ease of installation (my problem at present using it on NT4 boxes), ability to subreport, and others. For example, CR's exporting ability suits my requirements well. Reports can be exported to Excel, HTML, Lotus, RTF, Word files (mostly), into exchange folders and more. (I'm mixing CR32 and CR16 capabilities here) Tony wrote [] I appreciate your comments Russell. (Not sure I understand your first para too well. I think you are agreeing with us???) I am happy with QR (Despite all the bugs) but Customers KEEP on wanting stuff done in Crystal thanks to the MS marketing lies. I'd like to have a nice simple report builder to hand on to my customers instead of Crystal, but there does not appear to be much out there. As Steve points out, if your DB is anything larger than small (say 50MB) then Crystal is useless. No chance of geting them to change their thinking I suppose? IMO it is essential to be able to build the report around your own SQL. I don't consider your last Para a good reason. All of these can be done easily using QR or writing your own Delphi Components anyway. Of course there is allways Report Smith!!! Russell Replies: In my first para I was thinking how nice it would be to speed up one report I have in CR which takes too long because CR brings all records back to the client for filtering. I could move up to Crystal Info, but that adds cost to Winlaw and achieves only a five min saving per day for my clients. I could also do filtering using the bde before invoking CR on a temporary table. This then makes my report a one user at a time report - which is OK in this case. Someone earlier said CR7 does server side filtering. I'm still on CR5. The table record counts Winlaw deals with now are manageable. Based on the good words spoken here about Report Builder Pro I looked at the RBPro site www.digital-metaphors.com and liked what I saw. Exporting reports is not as simple as you indicate. I'm thinking about exporting reports to MSWord. CR can export to RTF faily well but it cannot export correctly to MS Word preserving all the formatting, for documents whose complexity is beyond that of RTF documents, but within Word 97 scope. Perhaps CR 6 and 7 have been improved; the CR tech team once told me something like "exporting 100% correctly to Word is in our too hard basket". Regarding my problem with CR5.0.1.108 (16bit) on NT4. I have almost concluded this verion of CR will not run under NT4. It installs on NT4 but will not run. The 32 bit version will run on NT4 (at least I can export a report and the exported package will run on NT). I'm waiting for comments from the CR tech support team, when they return tomorrow. From this team I've received one or two replies per working day. So I'm preparing to shift my 16 bit apps report package into a D4 program and this will mean having two bde's installed on each clients server. One for the app and one for its reporting package. Regards Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
RE: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Someone earlier said CR7 does server side filtering. The manual says this is new to CR7. CR can export to RTF faily well but it cannot export correctly to MS Word preserving all the formatting... Is that generally a requirement of report writers? if your DB is anything larger than small (say 50MB) then Crystal is useless. We are using CR6 on Access (900 MB) and MS SQL Server 6.5 databases up to 1.2Gb with no problems. Paul Ritchie RCS (NZ) Ltd. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
RE: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
At 13:36 15/03/99 +1300, you wrote: Someone earlier said CR7 does server side filtering. The manual says this is new to CR7. CR can export to RTF faily well but it cannot export correctly to MS Word preserving all the formatting... Is that generally a requirement of report writers? No it is not. It is a bonus. The "export to Word" task is v difficult. My apology to the CR people if I implied it was a defect in their product! Russell B. Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Tony wrote: nice simple report builder to hand on to my customers instead of Crystal, but there does not appear to be much out there. As Steve points out, if Report Builder Pro provides a very nice royalty free end-user report designer. Report formats can be stored in BLOB fields inside a database which is very handy, or also saved to disk. The report designer has -full- query-by-example editors so that you're clients to get to your data in any format they want. And you can also limit what they can see (i.e. hide table names and give them end-user descriptions making things very nice :) Russell wrote: www.digital-metaphors.com and liked what I saw. On the downside, Report Builder Pro is quite sore on the wallet, about NZ$500 from memory, but imho worth it. Exporting reports is not as simple as you indicate. I'm thinking about exporting reports to MSWord. CR can export to RTF faily well but it cannot export correctly to MS Word preserving all the formatting, for documents whose complexity is beyond that of RTF documents, but within Word 97 scope. Perhaps CR 6 and 7 have been improved; the CR tech team once told me something like "exporting 100% correctly to Word is in our too hard basket". For exporting to RTF/XLS/HTML with Report Builder, check out http://www.waler.com. A simple third-party "output device". So I'm preparing to shift my 16 bit apps report package into a D4 program and this will mean having two bde's installed on each clients server. One for the app and one for its reporting package. Eeek :( Not very elegant, but needs must I guess. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Fair enough... So I'm preparing to shift my 16 bit apps report package into a D4 program and this will mean having two bde's installed on each clients server. One for the app and one for its reporting package. Regards Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
At 13:46 15/03/99 +1300, you wrote: Report Builder Pro provides a very nice royalty free end-user report designer. Report formats can be stored in BLOB fields inside a database which is very handy, or also saved to disk. The report designer has -full- query-by-example editors so that you're clients to get to your data in any format they want. And you can also limit what they can see (i.e. hide table names and give them end-user descriptions making things very nice :) That would be nice for some clients. Russell wrote: www.digital-metaphors.com and liked what I saw. On the downside, Report Builder Pro is quite sore on the wallet, about NZ$500 from memory, but imho worth it. The current price of RBPro is US$495 with source. See their WWW site. Exporting reports is not as simple as you indicate. I'm thinking about exporting reports to MSWord. CR can export to RTF faily well but it cannot export correctly to MS Word preserving all the formatting, for documents whose complexity is beyond that of RTF documents, but within Word 97 scope. Perhaps CR 6 and 7 have been improved; the CR tech team once told me something like "exporting 100% correctly to Word is in our too hard basket". For exporting to RTF/XLS/HTML with Report Builder, check out http://www.waler.com. A simple third-party "output device". This is a worry. Some add on third party things don't keep up with the play. Mark didn't you say earlier you couldn't get this to install? So I'm preparing to shift my 16 bit apps report package into a D4 program and this will mean having two bde's installed on each clients server. One for the app and one for its reporting package. Eeek :( Not very elegant, but needs must I guess. There is a time to be pragmatic and a time to be elegant. "Everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler." A.E. Russell B. Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
We are using CR6 on Access (900 MB) and MS SQL Server 6.5 databases up to 1.2Gb with no problems. So can you please let us in on the secret, How do you get a report to run in a reasonable time where you have a join involving say 8 tables (not an unreasonable number) accross a 900MB DB, where any one of those table has lets say 1 million rows, and Crystal returns T1 X T2 X T3..X T8 Rows in the result set. I'd really like to know how you do this. I'd also like to know how you manage to stuff 900MB into access tables with reliability, but thats another issue. Ah to hell with it, it's not worth the argument. It may not be worth an argument but it is, I think, worth discussing. It would seem using CR6 with MS SQL 6.5 there is server side filtering, not client side filtering. From Paul's description we don't know if the Access table has many records or large objects per record. Or the average peak number of concurrent users per week. Regards Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Belding wrote: This is a worry. Some add on third party things don't keep up with the play. Mark didn't you say earlier you couldn't get this to install? I got another email from James this morning, the current version of his TExtraDevices is for RB4.05 (i'm still using 4.03) so I've just downloaded the new RB. Seems I got suck either side of the upgrades :) Hopefully I should get RB4.05 installed tomorrow and I'll report back. There is a time to be pragmatic and a time to be elegant. "Everything should be as simple as possible but not simpler." A.E. Very good quote there :) --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
RE: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
At 22:45 12/03/99 +1300, Tony wrote: The question I asked on my last mail was directed to the chap, who obviously new Crystal very well, but unfortunatly I haven't had a reply. To refresh your memory, the question was "Does Crystal still create real dumb SQL which can not be modified and which brings all columns back to the workstation where they are filterd locally???" Take a slow boat to china... This reply is from a pragmatic Crystal Reports user not from someone who knows Crystal internals well. I'm using the Crystal Reports Print Engine 16 from a D1 application and some reports requiring a date range or name of person it brings back all records to the client pc for filtering. If there is a smarter way to use the CRPE I'd would welcome insight. There are many areas to evaluate something like CR. Examples: prior investment, cost of changing, export ability, ease of installation (my problem at present using it on NT4 boxes), ability to subreport, and others. For example, CR's exporting ability suits my requirements well. Reports can be exported to Excel, HTML, Lotus, RTF, Word files (mostly), into exchange folders and more. (I'm mixing CR32 and CR16 capabilities here) [] I appreciate your comments Russell. (Not sure I understand your first para too well. I think you are agreeing with us???) I am happy with QR (Despite all the bugs) but Customers KEEP on wanting stuff done in Crystal thanks to the MS marketing lies. I'd like to have a nice simple report builder to hand on to my customers instead of Crystal, but there does not appear to be much out there. As Steve points out, if your DB is anything larger than small (say 50MB) then Crystal is useless. No chance of geting them to change their thinking I suppose? IMO it is essential to be able to build the report around your own SQL. I don't consider your last Para a good reason. All of these can be done easily using QR or writing your own Delphi Components anyway. Of course there is allways Report Smith!!! Cheers, Regards Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz application/ms-tnef
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
-Original Message- From: Mark Derricutt [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Multiple recipients of list delphi [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Friday, 12 March 1999 10:27 Subject: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4) Tony Blomfield wrote: In addition, IMO quick reports is very much simpler to use. Now we have Report Builder Pro, and that is a superb product. It is hard to imagine how Crystal could compete with RB Pro. *yay* another RBPro developer :) I've been using RBPro for a while now and find it to be one of the best reporting tools available, especially for customizability, the authors are always active on their news server at news.digital-metaphors.com and answer most questions within 1-2 days, a week at most. I find the ability to create your own report objects/components VERY nice, even though I havn't yet used it. Tony - Have you tried the TExtraDevices add-on? Which provides reporting to rtf/xls/html?? I'm having problems getting it installed into D3 :( Hi Mark, The answer is No. I am just making the transition from QR to RBPro, so I am a novice, but what I see, I like a lot. It's slick. The question I asked on my last mail was directed to the chap, who obviously new Crystal very well, but unfortunatly I haven't had a reply. To refresh your memory, the question was "Does Crystal still create real dumb SQL which can not be modified and which brings all columns back to the workstation where they are filterd locally???" Take a slow boat to china... C-Ya, Tony. Mark --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
At 10:45 pm 12/3/1999 +1300, Tony Blomfield said: The question I asked on my last mail was directed to the chap, who obviously new Crystal very well, but unfortunatly I haven't had a reply. To refresh your memory, the question was "Does Crystal still create real dumb SQL which can not be modified and which brings all columns back to the workstation where they are filterd locally???" Take a slow boat to china... Gidday Tony, The answer is definately half right to that one. It's a problem I hit a while back where Crystal does not generate certain SQL calls, e.g. "NULL", but filters those cals at the workstation. This causes problems when you e.g. ask for all records where the "name is NOT NULL". Crystal will select all records in this case to send to the workstation where the workstation will print only those with a blank name (maybe none). To get around this fault, you can edit the generated SQL directly - PROBLEM: You will have to remember to keep editing the SQL every time you open that report in Crystal as it re-generates the SQL every time. Hope this helps. I've been using QR but will have a looky at this RBPro due to the kind words and warm fuzzies experienced by others here. Steve __ |Steve Peacocke ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) | www.trader.co.nz/ | www.trader.co.nz/vizsla/ --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
Steve Peacocke wrote: I've been using QR but will have a looky at this RBPro due to the kind words and warm fuzzies experienced by others here. Steve, don't forget to check out the news.digatal-metaphors.com usenet server, just reading through should be very informative for you as well. Mark --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
Re: [DUG]: Report Builder Pro (was Delphi and Crystal on NT4)
At 22:45 12/03/99 +1300, Tony wrote: The question I asked on my last mail was directed to the chap, who obviously new Crystal very well, but unfortunatly I haven't had a reply. To refresh your memory, the question was "Does Crystal still create real dumb SQL which can not be modified and which brings all columns back to the workstation where they are filterd locally???" Take a slow boat to china... This reply is from a pragmatic Crystal Reports user not from someone who knows Crystal internals well. I'm using the Crystal Reports Print Engine 16 from a D1 application and some reports requiring a date range or name of person it brings back all records to the client pc for filtering. If there is a smarter way to use the CRPE I'd would welcome insight. There are many areas to evaluate something like CR. Examples: prior investment, cost of changing, export ability, ease of installation (my problem at present using it on NT4 boxes), ability to subreport, and others. For example, CR's exporting ability suits my requirements well. Reports can be exported to Excel, HTML, Lotus, RTF, Word files (mostly), into exchange folders and more. (I'm mixing CR32 and CR16 capabilities here) Regards Russell Belding Belding Computing Devices WINLAW, BIZXWORD, ENGPER. --- New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED] Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
