Crystal Reports .NET Is Utterly Shite

[Mark Roberts]

I have enjoyed using .NET, and C# very much and XCOPY deployment is a
dream.

Until I started to use Crystal Reports. It's crap beyond anything that
DLL hell ever managed to product. It's buggy, slow, clunky, badly
designed (push or pull model anyone???).

But that's not the worst. It a bastard to deploy (esp. if you've had
the pleasure of going from 2002 to 2003). And then you'd be lucky if
it actually works ok.

I've just had IIS crashing on me after trying to display current
parameter values in debug mode, and that's after a day of trying to
get round it's rubbish and convoluted object model.

It's a shame that Microsoft let this cancerous little embolism
anywhere near Visual Studio.

What utter shite.

 

[Stephajn Craig]

Jeff. Do you know of any good documentation for someone who has never
before laid hands on Crystal Reports?

 

[jeff]

it's difficult to find. you can get a lot of information from the crystal
reports web site by searching. the info is hard to find, but usually it's
there somewhere. i've searched for things, not found it then went back
later with new search ideas and found it. sometimes i couldn't find it by
searching their site directly, but did find a link to what i needed from
searching in yeahoo (a link to crystal reports). it's odd. if you are
familiar with reports in access, i find them to be very similar, identical
in many cases.

jeff

 

[Stephajn Craig]

So what kind of search keywords would you suggest for a total newbie to use?

 

[Michael D. Kersey]

Until I started to use Crystal Reports. It's crap beyond anything that
DLL hell ever managed to product. It's buggy, slow, clunky, badly
designed (push or pull model anyone???).

But that's not the worst. It a bastard to deploy (esp. if you've had
the pleasure of going from 2002 to 2003). And then you'd be lucky if
it actually works ok.

Why would one use it? All you need to output reports is HTML and text
for the most part.

 

[jeff]

you can probably just browse for info you're looking for. they have a lot
of samples, which would be good to start. i think .net installs samples
also, but i've never looked at them. it really isn't all that difficult,
it's just picky about how it wants certain things done.

jeff

 

[jeff]

it's a heck of a lot easier... it can export to pdf.... you can use the same
report file for a windows app and an asp.net app.... it supports
charts/graphs... plenty of reasons.

jeff

 

[Kevin Spencer]

It's crufty to the max.

HTH,

Kevin Spencer
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
Internet Developer
http://www.takempis.com
Big things are made up of
lots of Little things.

 

[jeff]

not a problem. deploying is easy. there are simple, clear instructions
from crystal reports called "Crystal Reports for Visual Studio .NET
Application Deployment". It has both web and windows form application
deployment. other than that, it's like creating a report in access, and
actually the .net 1.1 version doesn't seem to be nearly as buggy. i haven't
had a crash yet (biggest problem in 1.0 version for me).

the problem i had was stupid things like you weren't able to drag/drop
certain things because it would blow .net up. however, if you double click
it, then it would work. after learning these things (a quick learner will
figure out quickly that dragging crashes it so you don't do it), it is a
breeze.

jeff

 

[jeff]

i'm just a user of cr.

how do you think it's difficult to install. just read "Crystal Reports for
Visual Studio .NET Application Deployment". it puts in very plain english
the exact steps to deploy. it's about 6 steps. if you follow them (takes
you no more than 5 minutes to get it setup in .net), it works perfectly
every time. i don't know why nobody seems to read white papers on how to do
things.

jeff

 

[jeff]

plenty of people like pdf, and many documents online are in that format.
you must see that as an advantage, maybe not to you, but to most users,
especially since you claim html is all that you need. html printing is
garbage. you can open a pdf file and print perfect files.

so, how do you do graphs/charts with html?

jeff

 

[tom]

so, how do you do graphs/charts with html?

http://www.aspfaq.com/show.asp?id=2170 has suggestions for charting
and graphing on the WWW using Microsoft-compatible components and
tools.

 

[tom]

Youre not serious are you? Have you noticed that HTML produces different
results at different resolutions, and even more different results with
different browsers? This is just the tip of the iceberg as far as using
HTML for reports goes.

Top-posting is bad etiquette. I have corrected your mistakes. I see
you are new to WWW by how you post and your old Windows ideas. Maybe
you go back to Visual Basic and leave WWW alone, OK?

PDF is proprietary format of Adobe corporation. HTML is W3C standard
http://www.w3c.org/ and is the language of the WWW. HTML is great for
reports: millions use it each day.

You have weird definition of "reports", since you do not use HTML for
reports, no? Tell us definition of a "report" without using the words
"HTML" or "PDF" or "Crystal Reports" so we can understand.

With CR (which im not a big fan of either, but what
else is out there?), at least you get consistent results, and you can export
to PDF, which will definitely print correctly.

You cannot print from the browser?
Is not Crystal Reports license for that $200 per client?

Pay more for more trouble, slower response, extra API, new tool to
learn, and to make users angry with slow PDFs and Crystal Reports? Use
HTML and be OK.