I have no experience with Data Dynamics "Active Reports" - but here are some
real facts about Crystal from my experience... maybe someone with some
Active Reports knowledge can reply to this and we can get a comparative...
Pricing:
The prices are actually closer together than they seem at first - unless you
intend to push beyond 5 concurrent reports being rendered, in which any
server becomes very busy in doing if the queries are large or complex. I
use the Crystal version that came with .Net (but previously used 8.5 with
vb6) and it allows the web reporting components to have render 3 concurrent
reports at no_extra_cost above .NET. However, if you are going to have a
user base that hits the reports at the same moment every day, then you may
have some users that get "busy" errors. If that isn't acceptable, then the
Advanced edition allows 5 ($1495 retail - $1995 list), the processor license
($3750 retail -$5000 list) is unlimited per processor. They have web farm
capability as well and the enterprise edition for even more $$ which gets
fairly ridiculous, but so do the server requirements. Not sure what you
mean by runtime deployment licenses... I don't think there are any unless
you distribute runtime design components in Windows apps so end users can
create reports... hmmm... but I also only looked for a few minutes...
Features and my usage:
The included version (CR9 or 9.1) in .net has a cool viewer that actually
works well - much better than 8.5 and ASP, but printing is awkward and
imperfect from web pages... so naturally printing is imperfect on the
rendered report. So... I decided to use CR to produce pdf's for printing,
which is very easy to code and produces wonderful reports of any complexity.
Scalability:
I have some reports that query tables with almost 2 million rows and reports
containing 7-10 pages of tightly displayed data take about 4 seconds to
complete. On the system using 8.5 (allows 5 concurrent) and ASP
(encapsulated code in ActiveX Dll's) with 180 enrolled users and the reports
are the #1 asset to all of them - I have never heard anyone say that they
had trouble getting a report from the 5 licenses all being used.
I just looked at my server (Dell P4-1.8g, 10krpm scsi mirror) and noticed
that when I ask for a 7 page report containing 1 small graphic logos and 320
rows, 18 columns (mostly small numeric) that it spikes the processor to 100%
for 2 seconds while rendering the html report (laid out with divs and style
tags for a really true look), 70% for 1 second to generate the same report
as a pdf. If 5 concurrent users where hitting it all the time - I'm afraid
the box would be spent.
Analysis:
So it would seem that a processor license is not the real answer unless your
using one designed 4 or more years from now, which by then CR of course will
be several versions up and the new features will be too tempting. The
features are very good and I have not found anything I couldn't do with CR.
Also the support KB is great, and there are some good newsgroups for CR -
which means that your problems get solved. Support incidents are kind of
expensive (5 pack is like $350), but you get 3 free ones after
registration - I recommend saving them for really hard ones!
Good Luck - looking forward to hearing some AR comparisons!
--
Jerry Boone
Analytical Technologies, Inc.
http://www.antech.biz
Secure Hosting and Development Solutions for ASP, ASP.NET, SQL Server, and
Access
