When upgrading my clients to Expandable 8.1.2 (and beyond), I often run into a mixed deployment of Crystal 8.5, Compiled Crystal 8.5 (Viewer7), and Crystal 10 reports. The result is many conflicts, and licensing is tedious to manage and remain compliant.
In this article, I’ve assembled some important facts about Crystal and the functionality between the various versions. I’ve also researched and reviewed six Crystal Reports Viewers that you may want to consider deploying at your installation.
Important Facts about Crystal:
- You cannot compile reports higher than Crystal 8.5.
- You cannot view Crystal 10 reports saved in “Crystal” format without Crystal 10 installed.
- With Expandable’s Report Manager tool, you can embed reports within Expandable. These can be run by anyone with a login to Expandable and permissions for the report, but this option is not cost effective for users outside of Expandable.
- If you do not convert all of your reports to Crystal 10, you must manage and segregate the different versions of the reports. It’s conceivable that you have a compiled version of a report, an uncompiled version and the exact same report upgraded and embedded into Expandable. A single report change requires replicating the change to all reports.
- The cost for the standard version of Crystal reports is $174 (good for viewing and creating reports). The Professional version is $450 (more extensive database capabilities). The Developer edition is $579 and allows for VB programming. Even the cheapest is too expensive for just viewing reports.
- Your company may not have the resources to create your own viewer.
Looking for alternatives, I researched Crystal user websites and found many great articles with good information. My goal was to find a Crystal Report Viewer with the following features:
- Simple and easy to use
- Inexpensive
- Allow running reports (up to Crystal XI)
- Allow viewing reports saved in Crystal format.
- Eliminate need for Crystal Compiler
- Trial version available
With these criteria in mind, I investigated and reviewed six Crystal Report Viewers. I eliminated one quickly, when I found it only supported up to Crystal 9 (their website may be incorrect or the product was not updated – in either case, I didn’t look any closer).
The five remaining candidates were diverse in terms of licensing costs and features. Costs ranged from a free Adware-supported version, to products that run anywhere from $25 to $50 per user and up to $3000 for a 100-user site license. Features included report scheduler, batch processing, shredder, export options and more.
Although “simple” and “easy to use” are subjective in nature, all the products reviewed met my criteria. While I want my report writer to have every option and feature, I want a viewer with fewer options (non-geeky) for the user that allows for “set it and forget it” configuration.
Here’s how I ranked the products: |
