Crystal Reprts VS ComponenetOne

[lolwtf]

Hi Experts,

At the office, we are trying to decide if we want to go with Crystal Reports or ComponentOne. If anybody has used both could you list some advantages and disadvantages?

Thanks!

[CodeDoctor]

Hi Experts,

At the office, we are trying to decide if we want to go with Crystal Reports or ComponentOne. If anybody has used both could you list some advantages and disadvantages?

Thanks!

I've used both, pending on how much control you need both work quite well.

Crystal has alot more options in regards to what types of datasources you can use. But keep in mind, they are licensing costs associated to Crystal. ComponentOne may have, but I don't recall.

Another 'Free' option is using the built in SQL Reports inside of Visual Studio. Assuming you are using SQL Server for your database you can create reports directly inside of your project and embed them free of charge. Another nice thing is that they can bind to either datasets or business objects directly in your code.

You can either deliver these reports in a Windows Form app or an ASP.NET app. Very flexible and powerful capabilities.

[TomW]

You can build crystal reports right in the visual studio software too without the need of purchasing any full seperate editions of crystal reports.

[CodeDoctor]

You can build crystal reports right in the visual studio software too without the need of purchasing any full seperate editions of crystal reports.

It has been 4 years or so since using Crystal, so they may have relaxed the licensing model. However, I do recall needing development licensing in place prior to developing anything that uses the Crystal Reports in a production app.

[TomW]

I dont want to sound like an advocate for Crystal - personally Ive been looking to find something better myself, I just wanted to point out that it is free and a has whole design environment buit in to Visual Studio. And yes there licensing has changed from previous years, it used to be an add in product and is now fully part of VS. I remember in 2000 they had some ridiculous requirements at the time...

I do agree with Code Doctor that Sql Server Reporting Services are worth checking into and seeing if they meet your needs. Of course I dont even know if your using Sql Server...

One of the disadvantages of Crystal is slow load times. You can google that and see many people mention the same; most of which tends to be a poorly designed report in the first place. But even when properly designed, when you use a crViewer.Load object it takes a few seconds to load into memory.

With displaying reports you probably wouldnt even notice a few seconds of the report loading but priority for me at the moment is after a lot of processing is done in the background the end results are the reports being sent directly to different printers. I dont know if SSRS will solve this for me since it seems browser based.

What I do like about CR is that I can design a report based soley on a typed dataset (.xsd) without attaching it to a database or even coding anything within the report itself to process. Of course you can design the report to do the actually processing but again I have found that to be slower. Instead my app does the processing and I simply have to pass it my filled dataset. This is faster and works great when you may have dynamic and/or multiple datasources to deal with.

[sandpit]

I am in search of Crystal Reports 9 and ComponentOne True DBGrid 7 for a program I had created but lost. If anyone has either collecting dust on a shelf, let me know and we can help each other out -- thanks!

[TomW]

Are you sure it needs to be crystal 9, any newer version should be backwards compatible and update the report?