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Patrick Hartnett · Guest

We've been using Crystal Reports for a long time with Delphi, largely
because the ERP apps we also resell and write a lot of our custom software
to work with use it so it is a tool our customers already use, so there are
no additional licensing costs for them, and no new learning / training
curves, etc.

Looking ahead: Business Objects/Crystal Reports has now deprecated both the
RDC, the VCL/Crpe32.DLL Access method, and is providing only java or .NET
solutions after CR 11, what does the Delphi Community see as their option
for developing Win32 applications using Delphi & Crystal? We don't want to
use .NET as we don't have the time or resources to change our applications
over when this is the only reason for doing so...Per BO/Crystal, our only
choices are Java or .NET...

Here's my gripe:
We use the VCL component for integration, which up through 8.5, was great.
We went from using CR8.5 exclusively, to using CR10 due to changes with the
ERP software, and have had nothing but issues since. Since moving from
VCL8.5 to VCL10, we have found little, if any, happiness in using Crystal
Reports from Delphi.
Our main issue is with changing the database locations (Access, Direct
Access Btrieve/Pervasive, xBase data tables for the most part) at runtime
within a report. In 8.5, you could easily accomplish this via several
methods, we were able to scan and modify the Path parameter for the
individual tables to point to a new table, and it always worked, without
question.
VCL10 leaves much to be desired, as
1) the path is usually not populated for a table
2) sometimes, depending on the report, the Table Name was populated with a
full path, othertimes, not so much...
3)Per Crystal Support, we added functionality to adjust the
Table.ConnectBuffer property, works sometimes, but not always, depending on
the report, the database in use, and how the report was created (not
necessarily how it was last saved as we found out (8.5 rpt upgraded to 10,
9.0 rpt upgraded to 10, created in 10...the list goes on))
4)Installation - Merge modules, while nice in theory, in this case suck. For
one, the merge modules from BO don't have all of the necessary dlls
(crpe32.dll comes to mind...), the dlls that are included are not the right
versions for use with some of the VCL calls (crqe.dll v10.0.5.882 causes
access violations when you try repathing, wheras .877 seems to correct the
access violations, but still has its own issues) and others i can't remember
off the top of my head

Troubleshooting Crystal Reports has become way to much of a resource hog
since we moved to Crystal 10, and I'm now looking around trying to determine
where to go from here.

If someone has a magic bullet, tried and tested solutions, or anything that
might help, please, i'm all ears...

-Patrick

Gert de Boom · Guest

Patrick Hartnett · Guest

Thanks for the tips, I've already started looking into the RDC (.NET Interop
will be googled later too) , I'll be testing the RDC tonight hopefully to
see if that will carry us through until our customers move past the crystal
version that allows use of the RDC as well. Does the ActiveX require the
same administrative rights to the local computer when
installing/registering?(as you need when installing the merge
modules...unless someone has a way around that...)

I agree with you that CodeGear needs to step up here. .NET is not an option
for everyone, or every application, some assistance in re-developing not
only a good relationship, but also a good component or set of components for
integration would go a long way toward providing both Crystal and CodeGear
more customers, and higher satisfaction for said customers. I won't hold my
breath though, everyone i've talked to at Business Objects just laughs and
asks why we don't use .NET followed by "Isn't Delphi Dead?" While I've
looked at the crystal server / web server option, I have to say that most of
the small business customers I know simply won't fork over 10K just for
reporting access. We have our own solution to provide a lot of the same
distribution functionality for our clients at 1/10th the cost, though
maintaining it and keeping it working without fail in all situations for all
reports has gotten tougher with some of the issues i mentioned in repathing
the data tables in reports for our custom side.

*Gert: Thanks for all the forum posts, website tips, and everything else
you've contributed to the community too, your name comes up frequently when
troubleshooting

Doug · Guest

The best solution seems to be to use a TWebBrowser object in
your Delphi app and navigate to either a web app of your
design or a Crystal Enterprise server which in either case
returns the Crystal ActiveX viewer to the browser. We had a
lot of issues with both the VCL and RDC approaches, and
although we got both working, there were performance issues
(very slow) and, at least in the case of RDC, a lot of dlls
to manage. Using TWebBrowser, all of the upgrade and
integration troubles are external to your app and centrally
located, and the performance is excellent. As you mention,
the downside of course is that you have to have a web server
available to host the reports, but we saw this as a potential
advantage since the data and its presentation were both made
completely autonomous from the application. This arrangement
led to the development of further stand-alone reports that
were used for data analysis, etc. Another possible, but
manageable downside is that you may need to monitor the
Crystal activeX viewer events and/or pass it commands from
the TWebBrowser parent. This is all doable, but it requires
some effort to figure it out the first time through.

Doug

Patrick Hartnett · Guest

RDC looks promising from the documentation and your notes in the code, thank
you for the tip.

I'm trying to work with the ActiveX, but I'm running into some issues with
the initial setup...
1) Is it compatible with Delphi2005?
2) For Delphi2005, have you run across an install/setup guide for using
this? I know you said you were doing this at runtime, but I have limited
experience on the ActiveX side, and am not completely clear on the steps to
take to do this and avoid doing the installs for the IDE. I'm reading up on
the topic right now, but if you have the time or a good reference, any
insight would be appreciated.

On another note, I've also started a discussion with Nick Hodges regarding
Business Objects/Crystal and the future of Win32 integration going
forward...

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Gert de Boom · Guest

James Poll · Guest

I've got a good demo together working with Managed VCL. This has basically
allowed me to add the dot net crystal viewer into a dot net user control,
compile that to a DLL and then add that to a Delphi form so it appears to be
running natively in my app. You can create your own functions in the user
control to run code in the crystal viewer. This also appears to work well
with ms reporting services.

Downsides are that you need to have visual studio and your customers need to
have the dot net runtime installed and the relevent crystal or reporting
services libraries installed (these aren't part of normal dot net).
However, as you are using dot net you are keeping up to date with the viewer
(there have been rumours that activex will no longer be supported by
crystal) and you don't have to mess around with Twebbrowser.

Jim

"Patrick Hartnett" <patrick.hartnett@perryman-sw.com> wrote in message
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Gert de Boom · Guest

Jim,

James Poll · Guest

Fritzer · Guest