Writing VB app to process large Access data files. Can anyone give me some
pros and cons re Crystal Reports vs Access Report writer. Thank you.

Crystal reports look much nicer than Access.  Alot more detail.  Just my
opinion

IMHO:

Crystal is much more powerful, but you pay for the power.
I wrote my first reports in Access and found it only mildly annoying.
Crystal Reports will take six months to a year to learn well, and will
be much more annoying.
If you need it done now, and don't already know crystal, use Access.
If you want maximum flexability, use crystal, but prepare for a
learning curve.

--
Harrison.

Remove NOJUNK from my email address to reply directly

On Wed, 18 Mar 1998 09:38:39 -0800, "Jeff Harrison"

I've used crystal to send parameters to a stored proceedure
Big learning curve, but all in all, it's worth it

The following comments are re. v. 4.6 as included with VB 5.0:

The CRW UI is pathetic (just one (of many) example: Where do you delete a
formula? From the insert formula choice, no doubt... One more: lots of very
cryptic toolbar icons, no ToolTips, but they do put a tooltip in the status
bar way at the bottom of the window. Sorry, one more: the report previewer
does not know about PgUp/PgDn to page up and down.)

Their "formula" with "powerful" variables is usable but bizarre and it'll
take some getting used to if you are coming from Access. Their OCX is also
kinda bizarre--for instance, they have a write-only property called Action
that is really a method. They expose a write only array that looks like a
collection, but isn't, for changing stored "formulas" that you write a new
formula as a string of the form "formula name= new value" to change a stored
(only) formula. The OCX has a neat capability to bind to a data
object--except there is no ready way to use a pre-existing report that was
not edited against this binding and there is no easy way to do that but
write fake code to popup a Crystal preview and then do a save as report and
then go out in the report editor and fix it. It exposes all kinds of printer
setup properties, but it isn't real obvious that it is possible (still
playing around with this) to tell it to print to an hDC returned from the
common dialog print control--seems that this would be a really obvious way
to do it so that (as I desire to do) one could popup the print common
dialog, let the user play, then pass the hDC from this to Crystal and skip
setting up the other Crystal parameters. It's not threaded, so you can't
thread what you are building it into.

I'm no Crystal expert (I've been playing with it for one day.) It appears
that it can do some neat things, but you'll grit your teeth much of the way.
Why I'm using it instead of Access: in my app, I wanted to "just print a
report" from another app but I did not want to expose any of Access to the
users. Read all of Ch 21 of ADH and it has lots of workarounds to mostly
hide Access from the user. Mostly wasn't good enough. I display the data in
a FlexGrid, but I didn't think the printer object was powerful enough (not
to mention lots of code required) nor did I want to hack with the GDI
directly (not to mention even more code required.) It appears that Crystal
will be an acceptable compromise.

D. Watson

Access reports can run circles around crystal.  Each element of the report,as
in grooup footer group header, report header, footer etc, can have a code
module behind it reponding to a myriad of events.  The module can support
global counters, extrernal function calls, additonal record set operations,
and all sorts of sneaky stuff you can't even imagine in crystal.. Also Access
doesn't{*filter*}on queries with more than three levels of joins.

I have many times challenged fellow Crystal wizards to match what I can do in
Access, and have yet to have anyone even try.

If you want to seriously {*filter*}a Web server try Crystal Reports for the Web and
run any kind of serious report.  A moderately complex 30 page report can bring
an NT server to its knees, even with 96 mb of ram and less than 5 user
connections.

Also crystal 6.x seems to have serious problems coexisting with Office 97.
Tech support advises you must Unregister DAO 350 in order for it to work.

Try ActiveReports from Data Dynamics http://www.datadynamics.com it is very
similar to Access report designer and it is fully integrated into VB.
Download an eval from the above web site.

Issam Elbaytam
Data Dynamics

hey jeb,

        you vs. me.  code to code.  what do you say punk!

srubenst