Crystal Reports "Sucks"

Comments

# William said on November 7, 2004 12:53 PM:

I'm in the not so bad for what I need it for camp. We have some Oracle data bases that occasionally need some custom reports generated from them. I use Crystal Reports to do this because they never want to see the same things they did last time and it's a once every couple months kind of deal where they just want to see something in a report to send upstream. I use the Crystal Reports that came with some ESRI software so I don't know if it's a full version or not. SO for what I use it for it's not that bad but I haven't ever had to use it in depth so I can't say further than that.

On your toilet issue why don't you just turn the water off yourself to that toilet?

# William said on November 7, 2004 5:14 PM:

On the toilet thing - the water valve is stripped out so even if you turn it to off the water still runs. I ended up taking the tank off and pushing the plunger down over the whole so that stopped it - at least until the next time it needs flushed. I guess what bugged me so bad was that since i have two bathrooms, it automatically made it a non-critical issue.

As far as Crystal though - it's a good tool for doing stuff in house and getting info in a quck and dirty manner. The later versions are nightmares though and in every intelligible way that I can see, a move backwards. I mean, sure, you can claim you have "Strongly Typed Reports" but big deal when deployment is so sorry. The comment about it being fragile is probably the best way to phrase the current state of it -it takes NOTHING to break it. Look at the number of newsgroup posts on the 'Can't find Keycode32.dll' errors - I actually wrote an article on this because a lot of the documentation is wrong or points you to a different problem. And in the new VS.NET version - you don't even have design time preview, you have to add a viewew to your project, set the reportsource and open the form after the program is compiled.

In what you're doing, Crystal works great - that's the Crystal I originally learned and enjoyed. But this new crap is just awful. The VS.NET integration is so bad it's hard to describe. I mean, look at a product like Deklarit or even the N-Unit Add-In which integrate Seamlessly with VS.NET. The same isn't the case with Crystal and particularly, the old way you're used to doing stuff has changed so much that it takes a while just to get used to things.

When I look @ Reporting services and the flexibility of it, and the fact you can use Oracle, XML and just about everything else, it's hard to imagine what Crystal can do to compete there.

# William said on November 7, 2004 8:31 PM:

I haven't had too much trouble myself with Crystal Reports but this MAY be because in the Cobol era I had to teach myself The General Theory of Reports.

That is, creating multiple-level reports in the absence of "tools" involves knowing how to "break" the report with subtotals, etc.

I think the problem here is that the developer of Crystal saw himself (as I saw myself in 1978) doing the same thing over and over again, and, being a programmer, got bored and angry when he realized that he was being used as a machine to grind out the same algorithm in multiple programs, different only in detail.

He therefore developed a "report generator" as I did often enough, and then his wife threw him out (this is a Hypothetical Histree).

He moved to California without a job and convinced an entrepreneur that an entire class of program could be eliminated when viewed as the structural description of the report.

The problem is that the original "white box" tool automated for our hypothetical developer a series of steps he knew well whereas today, programmers don't get edumocation in the Pure Theory of How To Generate a Multiple Level Report with Subtotals Damnit.

It is assumed that they can use the "tool".

The problem is that as in the case of the automobile, there is quite a moral difference between a tool that automates something you can do, and a tool that atrophies as does the automobile abilities one needs.

I conclude that the situation is the same I describe in Build Your Own .Net Language and Compiler, where I have the student understand the by-hand algorithm.

By all means make the tool available but don't let it replace the knowledge of the underlying algorithm.

# William said on November 7, 2004 10:21 PM:

Have you used the newer versions like the one that comes w/ .NET? Uhhhh. Crystal USED to be a cool product, but it went backward. Strongly Typed Reports are the upside, but you pay for that 'wonderful' benefit by losing preview ability and an IDE that you can navigate around easily. And deployment - uhhhhhh - it's like getting kicked right in the nuts every time you need to change the database or a table or whatever.

# William said on November 8, 2004 12:02 PM:

Add my voice to the "it sux" column. It used to be good (visual studio 5), but the last time I had to touch it (version 8?), the licensing was so outrageous, it ended up becoming shelfware. At least until they hired a full time programmer just to work around the licensing issues. 2 years of his time was cheaper than paying for the enterprise server bohica license.

# William said on November 8, 2004 2:40 PM:

Crystal Reports aren't that bad. I haven't used any other "reporting engine" type of stuff before Crystal, so I'm extremely biased.

There are about 50 million ways to show different reports. I originally had nested subreports and would use a different sub report based on the different child table of the parent. I then changed it to use 1 sub report, tying in ALL child tables and then based on the parent "type" column it would show the child table/records it needed.

Without Crystal, there is no SalesLogix reporting. SalesLogix is the only reason I use Crystal and the only reason I know it at all. I make reports for our business but only in a very limited capacity. They work for what we do with them, but if I were to make my own CRM software, I would NOT include Crystal.

It is a severe pain to work with and you almost NEED someone trained in it. No one here in my office can correctly make a report but me, and I don't use the Wizard if that says anything. I would rather use a reporting tool that a common end user can use, where they simply drag the information from the database they need and it simply prints the information out in a clear concise manner. Reporting and databases can be a huge challenge to most end users but the goal SHOULD be that any end user anywhere can make a report. Crystal just doesn't allow that. It makes whatever company that uses it pay for some Crystal guru when they really need a reporting tool that anyone in the company can use. Empowering the end users so that they can control their data is the ultimate goal that no reporting software seems to actually achieve. You seem to always need a "middleman" in whatever reporting software you use.

# TrackBack said on November 8, 2004 7:00 PM:

# William said on November 8, 2004 8:32 PM:

Just got into SSRS myself. Bought the apress book and the wrox book. the apress book is good for our data analyst...the wrox book good for the coders.

i hate crystal with a passion. I have written my own report engine on more than one occasion to avoid crystal. plus, could crystal be more freakin' expensive for the enterprise version? it makes pretty pictures! and the new one with .net...could they be more intent on not having you do anything outside of the GUI designer? The designer that sucks...

anyway, I may be coming to you with my reporting services questions, as it appears you are slightly farther along the curve than I.

# TrackBack said on November 9, 2004 9:55 AM:

# William said on November 18, 2004 10:39 AM:

I am absolutely in the "Crystal Sucks" group. The other day I wasted a whole morning trying to convince Crystal that there was in fact a new field in the stored procedure it was accessing. Why tie down a programmer like that? Let me tell you what I want and if that doesn't work, I am trained to figure out why. Don't dummy proof systems so much that they are hard to work in. All the wizy wig environment of Crystal does is limit it's potential.

Crystal seems to ignore a major issue. In programming and development, maintenance is key. Because the time it would take to release a completely bug free system is not worth the time and resources, because the system is always needed yesterday. Also business changes, thus reports must change. In Crystal, the fact that you can't go in and easily update a report makes it worthless in my book.

# William said on November 24, 2004 10:06 AM:

Crystal Reports clearly does "suck". There are countless features that are so mundane, common, and seemingly simple that it amazes me how futile the effort has been to implement them. Let me list just a few on my list:

* Sub-reports Within Sub-reports - This needs no further explanation. Without this ability a reporting engine is worthless.
* "Buggy" Can Grow Property - This needs to work better with fields below it. What is the point of allowing a field to grow if it is only going to grow all over the rest of your report? Not to mention that doesn't work well with subreports (seeing a trend yet?)
* Limited Support for Adhoc Queries - Ever try to use a custom SQL statement as your data source? Doesn't work so well. It seems Crystal would prefer that you create countless views on your server to accomplish even the simplest reporting tasks.
* Calculations On-the-Fly - Why can't I take a field from my data source and modify its appearance on the report? As an example, if I have a floating-point number that is returned from my query I would like to be able to format the number to the correct number of decimal places and add the '' on the report rather than in the query.

In general, I agree with an earlier poster who mentioned that Crystal seems to be trying to save us programmers from ourselves. For a developer's tool, this is a suicidal position to take.

# William said on December 9, 2004 8:00 PM:

..OK Well thats better. I thought it was just me...

I spent most of my day trying to figure out why Crystal changes the value of a simple integer value from a query. In SQL analyzer directly, the stored proc returns a value of 14228. When I pull the field into Crystal it turns into 14356 ?!!?? ARGH!
I think I fall into the ..'Its sort've okay, when it works,...but I want to see the "code" when something doesn't work...otherwise its just trial and error, no real learning takes place. - mp

# William said on December 9, 2004 8:12 PM:

Amen Brother

# William said on January 20, 2005 3:42 PM:

Crystal Reports is designed for idiots and trained monkees. If you consider yourself a programer, you may know there are 50 other ways to create reports and make them pretty for the executards. Thanks to Crystal, today is the first day in a very, very long time that I wanted to smash my computer. It's like, "Ok, what kind of tomfoolry do I need to engage in just to change the title?" Sure, it is easy enough but, it would be just as easy to click on the title and change the text instead of opening up some moronic wizard or properties dialog. As a trend. I hope .net eats this crap up and it goes away.

# William said on January 25, 2005 1:16 PM:

I've just all of the comments about Crystal Reports product above and, as someone who works with the product extensively I can see that people above clearly have not taking any training before using the product so that they could understand how to use it effectively.

The wizards are used typically to create the report - you wouldn't use it to edit the report however, you would just, for example, add another column by simply dragging the database field into the details section.

As for subreport within subreports - recursively allowing unlimited numbers of subreports is a sure way to cause problems - not to mention making your report impossible to follow by anyone other than the person who created it. I've never yet seen an instance where this was a must.

If you are having troubles, stop beating your head against your monitor and get in touch with the Customer Support reps at Business Objects, they are well trained and capable of helping you either through their Answers-by-Email system or, for a small cost, over the phone.

But the most important thing to do is to get some training with the product first. It will save you countless hours of hair-pulling.

# William said on January 25, 2005 1:23 PM:

B - I appreciate it but I personally have gotten training on CR and I just really don't like it. I think the previous versions befoer the new 'improved' vs.net integration was light years ahead of where we are now. Crystal is dying - look through the newsgroups at how many people hate the product. This is just one blog post and the only people that don't dislike the product are people using the older versions which are notably better than what we have now.

# William said on February 1, 2005 12:50 PM:

Hmm...reading through the comments of this forum reminds me of the farm...but we won't go there. My animal stories are usually not well-received.

Where was I? Oh yah, this forum reminds me of an old goat farmer that got himself into trouble with a motorbike. See, all his life, this goat farmer rode on bicycles (...and goats). So he was used to the slow, feature-simple machine that got him around town, but didn't get him very far.

One day, he decides he's going to take his son's new motorbike out for a ride. Being so confident in his riding skills, but having little knowledge of the machine, he hopped on the beast, started it up, and gave 'er!!
Did I mention it was Suzuki GSX-R 750? Hmm...the Gixxer...killer bike. Don't ever crank the throttle on it if you don't know what you're doing. You'll be in a world of pain....130 goat-power on a sub-400lb machine...explosive combination. ANYways... so the goat farmer manages to launch himself and the bike about five feet in a cloud of burning rubber and exhaust before the bike flips and lands on top of him.

Barely escaping with his life, he curses the bike, and in his narrow-mindedness he vows that he will never ride a Gixxer again, and will spend the rest of his days posting hate messages on forums while quietly going insane.

So what's the moral here? Always get motorcycle lessons! Er...I mean Crystal Reports lessons. AND THEN...spend 4 months of using it for 8 hours a day straight, and you will START to feel comfortable with it.

Crystal is a very advanced tool. It's not for goat farmers. If you want to get everything out of it, you better have lots of knowledge in database/data warehouse design, have some good programming skills (for the formulas), and have some artistic flair. Oh yah, it helps if you know SQL well. Because if you can't do it in Crystal (subreports within subreports), you can do it in a stored proc and bring the result into Crystal.

Once you have all that, and have been using it for a while, you will reach the "Crystal Zen". Then you will be posting messages like this because you will know the truth, my brothers and sisters.

# William said on February 1, 2005 12:55 PM:

Yah Coco -- right. Crystal is greasy kids stuff - REporting Services kicks it's butt. Sure you can ride around on motorcycles, but Porsche's are cooler -

Programming for Formulas huh? That's great. You see, I think everyone here that posted already knows how to program and knows SQL. And at least as far as I'm concernred, I got crystal reports training and way back in 7.0 days, it was cool. Once it moved into VS.NET - bah. Oh boy, Strongly Typed Reports - Whewwwew. I know I sure got myself in a lot of trouble becuase of untyped reports.

Crystal is for secretaries - not programmers - that's the real moral here ;-)

# William said on February 1, 2005 1:08 PM:

Wow Bill, you just called everyone in this forum a secretary. Nice going...

By the way, I highly recommend a session with Bob the Angry Flower on the use of apostrophes:

http://www.angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif

...like I said, education is the key to enjoying Crystal. ;O)

# William said on February 1, 2005 1:31 PM:

Thanks Coco - Actually I thought I was posting to a comment on my own blog. Oh well. And in the context of your comments- I thought we were being flippant.

Oh well, and thanks for the update on my typo. I hate it when I do that.

# William said on February 5, 2005 9:13 PM:

I'm most definitely in the Crystal "Sucks Bongwater" category. I have spent 3 days figuring out the most basic tasks (at least they should be basic). The solution.... restart from scratch.... what didn't work, now does. I'm more frustrated than an Amish Electrician!
Writing the code to interface to the report was (relatively) easy, getting the report to format correctly.... a nightmare.

# William said on February 7, 2005 4:05 PM:

I'm on board with it "Sucks" it used to be a good tool but since ver 6.0 and I’ll give you 7.0 wasn't too bad this software has gone down hill. I liked it when I could create a simple report for the "executards" and then make it self executable and put it in their folder for them to run at their leisure. Then along came the web deployment what a fragile piece of crap! I tried on several occasions to use this worthless deployment method with short lived success each time before another report broke or crapped out. And yes I did have training on 3 different versions along with 7 years of working with the product. I have probably developed over 1K reports with the tool but I’m seeking an alternative now and it looks like SQL Report writer may be it.

# William said on March 22, 2005 1:57 PM:

I really enjoyed finding this collective rant! I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one suffering out here because of this dumbed-down piece of crap “tool” that seeming doesn’t allow you to do simple operations that I could easily do w/ other tools at my last company were they were actually willing to pay for things that worked instead of hacking away at junky tools that just happened to be packaged w/ Visual Studio. I f@#*ing hate wizards. If you <b>need</b> a wizard you are either lazy or inexperienced. They limit you in every way, and CR doesn’t let you take off these training wheels.

You’ve all got me on one point though… I don’t know what you’re all talking about that CR didn’t suck at one point. I used Crystal 6.0 years ago and swore I would never use this f*&%ing piece of s#!& again. But of course the job market in Pittsburgh is a little thin at the moment and my company’s arch nemesis consumed us and forced me to take a MF-ing job were there just happens to be Crystal Reports.

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:00 PM:

Comparitively speaking - it sucks wayyyy more now. Where are you @ in Pittsburgh? I went to school up there and lived dahntahn at Washington Plaza. Used to hang out on da sasssss side too. I love Pittsburgh.

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:15 PM:

Sassssss side is a lot of fun! I lived on 11th and Carson during college, but I’m now living in Elizabeth (south of Century III mall). I love it here. I just wish the job market would get better.

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:17 PM:

Where did you go to school? Duquesne? Pitt? CMU?

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:28 PM:

Pitt, but I hung out with the Duquesne Red Masquers (theater company) most of the time. My wife (then girlfriend) was going to Duquesne at the time...

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:30 PM:

Oh yah, what year? I finished school at Duquesne, graduated in 93. I hung out a Pitt a lot, CJ's and Peter's and of course, the O.

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:30 PM:

And Primanti Bros

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:39 PM:

I started at Pitt in 95...

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:42 PM:

Oh well, we probably never crossed paths. BTW, that's a pretty interesting name you're using ;-).

# William said on March 22, 2005 2:55 PM:

My last name was polish for "White God" before it was changed when my great grand father came here. It's kind of wierd so I use it some times :-)

# William said on April 1, 2005 5:16 PM:

Again, they have this thing it is called SQL. Other than to have another "skill"and comensurate pay, why on earth do I need to learn the cryptic inflex secret Crystal query language. I should be able to do everything in SQL on the data layer, and drag and drop the results into the presentation layer - the report. Then use the snazzy crystal wizards to make it look pretty.

What the hell does crystal have to do with data types. Everything should come over as a string, and then format each field to whatever type if I need. But this crap is like jumping through flaming hoops just to walk to my car. I'd rather just walk to my car than use Crystal.

Everyone knows sql. Why not just use it? Why do I need a friggen wizard for everything? I don't. Why do I need 4 months of 8 hour days working in Crystal to do something that I can construct in SQL in my head in like a minute. This is bizare. It is akin to learning cuneiform just so I can translate it back to English.

Crystal does suck. Nothing more, nothing less.

# William said on April 19, 2005 9:37 AM:

Crystal report sucks sheeee*****t. Packaging it with the VS.net IDE was a mistake.

# William said on May 3, 2005 11:30 AM:

Creating reports with CR is OK, updating the data is a bit of a pain (have you guys tried using ADO.NET datasets?) but the REAL pain is when you try to get CR to generate reports on your deployment machine.

Oh yes, and a word about businessobjects support:
They are very friendly and helpful ... until you have used up BOTH of your free "incidents" ... then start coughing up cash to get help for this engine, which is btw included in VStudio, to actually work!

# William said on May 10, 2005 2:09 AM:

Arrrrrgggggg!!!! I'm in the Database Login Failed shit bag camp. What does it take to deploy a simple Microsoft Access database report anyway. CR .NET sucks so bad!! Business objects website is no help at all. I am Joe Average developer using the most basic features and can't get this thing to deploy at all. I'd fire the entire Crystal Reports staff and sell their office furniture if I were CEO of Business objects.

# William said on May 11, 2005 3:22 PM:

Yes, I agree that Crystal Reports sucks. But one question you should all be asking is: How come the reporting in Microsoft Access is pretty solid, but their SQL server reports package sucks a$$? I think that SQL Server reports are probalby just as bad if not worse that Crystal. There is very limited funtionality in SQL reports (like being able to have a section 'keep together'). Microsoft did an awesome job with Microsoft Access reports... they need to make some organization changes and move the developers from the Access report team to the SQL reports team.

One of the best reporting tools I have used was Oracle Reports. That beast did everything I ever needed it to do and did it right. The interface was a little clunky, and it took a few hours to figure out how to use it, but once you figured it out, there was nothing that couldn't be done. The only downfall with it: very pricey.

Just my 2 cents...

# William said on May 20, 2005 5:13 AM:

I'm new to Crystal Reports (about a week) and I can already say that it definitely sucks big time. Here are some of the problems I've encountered so far:

1) Impossible to position the fields properly. For example while for some of them I can set the height to 0.45 for some other Crystal insists that it should be 0.44 for no apparent reason.

2) Each time I import a subreport, some of its formatting is lost. In addition, in several occasions, you have to completely delete the subreport and insert it again in order for it to work properly.

3) While the report works fine on Crystal, on the Web (.Net) complains for various things, such as, for example, missing parameter values.

4) When exporting the report to pdf (.Net), the format of the date fields is lost even if it has been explicitly specified in Crystal using the customise date option.

5) Reports are corrupted very easily. On several occassions I had to start all over again to make the report work.

These are just some of the problems that I come across. I definitely encountered many more but I don't remember tem (how can one remember so many errors in such a short period of time?).

Bottom line: Avoid Crystal if you can...

# William said on May 20, 2005 5:13 AM:

I'm new to Crystal Reports (about a week) and I can already say that it definitely sucks big time. Here are some of the problems I've encountered so far:

1) Impossible to position the fields properly. For example while for some of them I can set the height to 0.45 for some other Crystal insists that it should be 0.44 for no apparent reason.

2) Each time I import a subreport, some of its formatting is lost. In addition, in several occasions, you have to completely delete the subreport and insert it again in order for it to work properly.

3) While the report works fine on Crystal, on the Web (.Net) complains for various things, such as, for example, missing parameter values.

4) When exporting the report to pdf (.Net), the format of the date fields is lost even if it has been explicitly specified in Crystal using the customise date option.

5) Reports are corrupted very easily. On several occassions I had to start all over again to make the report work.

These are just some of the problems that I come across. I definitely encountered many more but I don't remember tem (how can one remember so many errors in such a short period of time?).

Bottom line: Avoid Crystal if you can...

# William said on June 5, 2005 12:05 PM:

Can Grow property is freaking me out. It is disabled for some text boxes, enabled for others. (Crystal Reports 10 Developer Advanced.)

Invalid Human Proof : shmuck..

# William said on June 17, 2005 9:59 AM:

If crystal reports suck so much what are the alternatives?

Right now I am using combit List&Label and I have never used Crystal
From my point of view and from screenshots of Crystal I would be more than happy to use crystal rather than this crap. List&Label has such a limited capabilities that is like comparing windows Paint (List&label) to Photoshop (crystal) or so it seems.
I have to write about 20 reports for my company so tell me what choice do i have? All of my reports seem pretty striaght forward in Crystal, and none of them did i implement in List and Label yet.

Chao,
VVind

# William said on June 21, 2005 6:32 PM:

I'd rather shit out shards of glass than use crystal reports.. trust me it sucks. Check out D-source, it delivers relieeeef.

# William said on July 1, 2005 2:33 AM:

this crap/crystal tool beats me.
how do i create a 'strongly typed report' ?
documentation sucks
concept of 'ease of use' , is seriously missing in CR !

# William said on July 18, 2005 6:39 AM:

It would be quite good if all of Crystal Reports' source code, all physical copies of it, all computers on which it is stored, and all the developers who worked on it suddenly caught fire at the same time.

# William said on July 21, 2005 6:57 PM:

I don't understand why everyone is hating on Crystal Reports so much. Granted, it is the only reporting solution I've used, but there hasn't been one instance where I have hit a brick wall that I can't figure out in an hour or so.

I've deployed over 100 reports, a CR Server, and update them occasionally. I don't think they are fragile and maybe a lot of you are jaded because you've used other tools that might be a little more noob friendly.

Spend some time learning the in's and out's of the program, then throw some stones. Any reporting tool has a learning curve. Once you've spent some time with this tool, it is remarkably powerful and easy to use.

*sidenote - I've been using Crystal from version 9 to XI

# William said on July 21, 2005 7:21 PM:

Crystal Developer - honestly, you don't have a clue.

<<Spend some time learning the in's and out's of the program, then throw some stones. Any reporting tool has a learning curve. Once you've spent some time with this tool, it is remarkably powerful and easy to use. >>

Umm, where exactly did you get the idea that we didn't know how to use it or anywhere near the beginning of our learning curves? Dude, I've used it since v6.0 and it SUCKS. Compared to any other tool on the market, everythign after 9 BLOWS. V7 and 8 were ok and there wasn't reporting Services back then, but now, you have to be out of your mind.

I can't believe the statements your making. 100 Reports? Dude, you have to be kidding me. I've pushed out well over 1,000 in Crystal Alone although avoid it like the plague. Noob Friendly? Ok, tell me what's NOOB about pulling data from 4 diffferent databases and 2 web services all in one report?

Ok, so it's not fragile? Hmmm, waht happens when you change a table that the report is dependent on? That's not fragile huh?

Before you throw NOOB out there, you ought to really understand what you're talking about. 100 Reports on CR is hardly enough to really realize how crappy it is and number alone isn't really the main metric, more depends on what you've had to do with it. How many different places you've deployed them, how many db changes you've had to accomodate, how many Datasource changes you've had to deal with (ie from Sql Server or Oracle to a Web Service or MSMQ or XML File).

Spare me the lectures dude...

# William said on July 25, 2005 6:24 PM:

<<Ok, so it's not fragile? Hmmm, waht happens when you change a table that the report is dependent on? That's not fragile huh?

Depends on what you mean by changing a table. If it is updated the table, then it has functions built in to update the database and links. If the entire table is removed, or everything in the table is changed, you probably have to recreate a large bit of the report - but it's not that difficult.

<<I can't believe the statements your making. 100 Reports? Dude, you have to be kidding me. I've pushed out well over 1,000 in Crystal Alone although avoid it like the plague. Noob Friendly? Ok, tell me what's NOOB about pulling data from 4 diffferent databases and 2 web services all in one report?

There is a pretty big difference between pushing out 1,000 crystal reports that take 5 minutes to make, and 100 that take 20+ hours a piece. 4 different databases and 2 web services - if everything is linked correctly and designed right, that shouldn't be a problem. If it's not - that's when it gets fun, but of course, you'd find that problem in any program if it wasn't linked correctly.

I've dealt with Oracle, SQL, XML, and Access. I have created tiny reports, numeous tedious tiny reports, but I don't count them in the 100 I listed. The 100 are something to be proud of - not something I developed in the Wizard and exported.

<<Before you throw NOOB out there....

I wasn't trying to call you a NOOB, so I'm sorry if that's how you took it. I was saying that maybe there are other reporting tools out there that get you halfway through a mediocre report without really knowing what you're doing.

*not calling your reports mediocre - because frankly I don't know what you've done or haven't done*

Frankly I like the new features in XI and I believe a global repository on the current CR Server - with the new dynamic parameters - is a pretty sweet addition. You can do things that make an end-user feel like they're a master of IT, and if that happens - I've done my job.

# William said on July 25, 2005 6:40 PM:

<<Depends on what you mean by changing a table. If it is updated the table, then it has functions built in to update the database and links. If the entire table is removed, or everything in the table is changed, you probably have to recreate a large bit of the report - but it's not that difficult. >>
The fact it's not difficult doesn't mean it's not fragile.

<<There is a pretty big difference between pushing out 1,000 crystal reports that take 5 minutes to make, and 100 that take 20+ hours a piece. 4 different databases and 2 web services - if everything is linked correctly and designed right, that shouldn't be a problem. If it's not - that's when it gets fun, but of course, you'd find that problem in any program if it wasn't linked correctly. >>
I"m not going to get in some pissing battle with you about the complexity of reports, but suffice to say that I've pushed out many with well over 10 -15 tables . Sure, that's not a major feat but it's hardly a 5 minute endeavor either. I'd REALLY like to see you go pull data from 2 disparate sources, like a Web Service as well as a Database, that AREN'T LINKED and tell me how simple that is. The whole notion of 'linked correctly', well dude, how is a web service linked to a totally different database at all. By definition they aren't. THink of the scenario of distributed transactions that you might report on. BY DEFINITION they aren't "LINKED". That's where things get quite difficult.

As far as your comments that you weren't calling me or anyone else a noob "I don't think they are fragile and maybe a lot of you are jaded because you've used other tools that might be a little more noob friendly. " Ok, but the implicaiton surely looks that way.

<<I've dealt with Oracle, SQL, XML, and Access. I have created tiny reports, numeous tedious tiny reports, but I don't count them in the 100 I listed. The 100 are something to be proud of - not something I developed in the Wizard and exported. >>

Ok, me too. I also report on both regular DBs, as well as large Data Warehouses /OLAP. I've also worked regularly with DB2 and MySql. Access isn't a real database. I didn't use the wizards either. Matter of fact, with few exceptions, I roll my own stored procs first , then roll my own sql in the report.

The simple fact is that Report writing is done by rookie programmers most of the time or non programmers. Every tool out there that's widely used takes this fact into account. We can argue all day about which is 'better' but the fact is, that a WHOLE LOT OF EXPERIENCE CRYSTAL USERS HATE IT. It's not because of ignorance of the product. It's not because they haven't done enough with it or they don't know what they're doing . In large enterprise scenarios, with disparate datasources that all need pulled into one place, CRYSTAL is not only bad, it's terrible. It's beyond terrible for most issues. XSLT can dance circles around it and has nowhere near the overhead.

# William said on July 25, 2005 6:57 PM:

My remarks have simply been that I have not had experience with other reporting tools. I have not found Crystal to "suck" personally, which was what the basis of my statement was.

I was interested to see why people thought it sucked, as I like hearing the other side of the story with specifics. I did not see that through this blog, so I wanted to hear it from the horses mouth, so to speak.

I am simply someone who is employed, and found that learning and getting certified as a CRCP has helped out my multi-billion dollar company significantly - as the people currently employed that are in charge of the reporting either

A) Like to sit on their ass and milk money instead of getting reports made for people that need to know exactly what is going on in their world

or

B) Honestly can't create what I want and want to sit back earning their not-so-earned paycheck.

I have a CompSci background, but am currently in a management position that really didn't have any ties to IT at all. I found Crystal and started using it, learning it, and then started creating reports with it. I got noticed and then was instructed to start creating "specialized reports" from the upper-bureucrats as they saw I didn't play the lazy game.

I now run one of the most efficient and audited branches in my company and have Crystal to thank for it.

I have since become a little bored with my job as this sparked my love for analytical thinking and programming, albeit not quite like writing in C++, so I have started looking for an IT position somewhere involving report writing. I would like to know what tools others in this sort of niche industry utilize so that I might look into learning their in's and out's. I'm not really about getting into pissing contests, so if that's how I came across, please accept my apologies - but I thought this might be a nice forum to learn something new from someone that does this for a living.

# William said on July 25, 2005 7:24 PM:

Ok - point taken. From the orignal tone I thought you were lecturing - it's not uncommon for Crystal developers to come here and start lecturing everyone about how stupid they are if they don't use Crystal. Not everyone is a developer and we should do what we love. COding isn't for everyone, or even most people. And developers tend to be the worst report (and UI) developers I know - present company included. We can get data and make it dance, but making it look readable is another story. Sorry if I came off like an ahole ;-)

# William said on July 26, 2005 6:40 PM:

If you don't mind me asking, what is your current job role - and what is your opinion of contract jobs when it comes to reporting needs?

# William said on July 28, 2005 2:02 PM:

Wow, what a long-lasting thread!

I'm very, very new to Crystal. Here's my $0.02: it seems pretty powerful. As often seems the case, the more powerful the application, the more obtuse the interface. Personally I think the quickest report generator I've seen in my experience is Excel with the ODBC interface. Of course, there are limitations to Excel and that's why I'm dealing with Crystal now.

The people at Business Objects are friendly and were willing to help out with the technical support issues.

If Crystal is really sucking it would seem like prime time for someone to create an alternative. If nobody has, why not?

# William said on July 28, 2005 2:07 PM:

They have already - ActiveReports and MIcrosoft Reporting Services are just two of the more popular ones that come to mind

# William said on August 9, 2005 10:01 PM:

Yeah - I have decided to remain with 8.5 due to the licensing costs and issues.

For now, at least , I'm stuck with ASP, and try as much I cannot move on to to .NET until such time as I get the time to redevelop all the my previous efforts (at this time, all that my clients want are mods to to those due to changing business needs). The "sucks" issues have been an eye-opener re .NET.

However, this I have to say re Crystal. Was a headache to get started (at 7.0, with VB5.0 a few years ago) as there was little or no doco to do what I wanted it to do - i.e. keep the presentation separate from the data (I came at the time from a Gupta's SQL-Windows background). Until I "discovered" how, but it took some time experimenting. I have my "forms" separate from my SQL statements, and thus the move from VB to ASP was pretty much painless, following the ASPX examples.

I am looking into alternative methods as I find the current BO licensing/pricing models outrageous.

# William said on August 12, 2005 6:11 PM:

I despise Crystal.

Projects have doubled in time due to it. Try to do anything different 9deviate from the norm) with it and your in for some fun.

# William said on August 28, 2005 10:01 PM:

...Ok, it sucks, but once you learn to use it it's not that bad as long as you don't try to do too much with it, and you don't have to be a programmer to use it either. It's a reporting engine afterall, not a dabase and does not do excel type of data modeling or calculations....

to the person that had to start over again to add a new column with the wizard - the wizard does not do everything for you... try using the toolbar and drag-and-drop a textbox - it's not that hard.

to those with problems moving or re-sizing things "just a little bit"... turn of the snap-to-grid temporarily, or re-size the grid spacing to something really small like .00001.

these little tricks do help, but not always. I have had many times where I end up re-formatting half the report when just adding a new field....it sucks

to the person with problems deploying the reports - TELL ME ABOUT IT!! We have a .Net web project with over 100 crystal reports and 15 to 20 different environments (i.e. dev, QA, staging, production,.... and a different SQL server and database name for each environment) . Deploying all of those reports to each environment was painful and time consuming. You are supposed to be able to set those at run-time in the code but I believe the issue was you had to be using a developer version and not the professional version for that to work. I ended up writting a utility program to change the database name and server name when we deployed the reports to each environment. That got to be anoying too, but an hour or two a week was better than 1 - 2 days for each environment.

Everything has it's quirks in software though. I'm currently the lead on a project to convert all of those 100+ reports into Reporting Services. So far it seems to be better, but it also has it's quirks, and deployment is going to require a custom script. The cost is a little but extreme too.

# William said on August 28, 2005 10:08 PM:

EStump
- that's probably the best analysis of the situation I've heard ;-) Well done.

# William said on August 29, 2005 2:06 PM:

Crystal Reports is truly evil. I can't wait until MS finally writes their own equivalent and hangs Business Objects out to dry.

There's a reason why Active Reports and XtraReports are the two most popular reporting tools for purchase today and very few are buying or even upgrading Crystal Reports.

# William said on September 9, 2005 10:59 AM:

CR Sucks!
How about: You can't copy/cut/paste more than a single item at a time, so if you want to move or reproduce some fields/text in another section, you have to move/copy each one one at a time!!

# William said on September 10, 2005 12:18 AM:

Crystal has gone down-hill without a doubt. I started with 6.0 and VB5, went to 8.5 and ASP using Crystal's UI. The VS.NET 2003 UI sucks hind tit. I use the push model of supplying data to reports via ADO.NET datasets and CR 9.1 had "issues" doing that without presenting parm and login dialogs. Struggled with that a few weeks, then CR issued SP5 which fixed those issues.

Hated Crystal UI in VS 2003 so much I talked the boss into buying CR 11. My current project is a .NET smart client app wriiten in VB.NET with .NET Remoting of the biz and data layers through IIS. Backend is SQL 2000. Data layer calls sprocs (no SQL is submitted by the app or CR). CR needs to be deployed with the app because the next phase of this project is to make the entire app able to operate in off-line mode. That means reports need to accompany the app.

All seemed well until I created the setup project. My app went from 1MB without CR to 64MB. Turns out CR 11 outside of VS uses a merge module the size of Texas. You can select the features you want to be installed on the target machine, but CR forces this to be done from a 63MB merge module that has to be deployed with the app.

Loaded VS.NET 2005 Beta 2 to see if CR 10(?) would reduce the size of the install and got bit in the ass. The SQL-DMO libs got screwed on my development machine so EM was useless. Had to remove 2005 and re-install VS 2003. Now when I open any CR report in VS IDE, the button to toggle the "fields" panel on/off is stuck in off mode - can't add fields to existing reports.

Building a new report allows field selection from the wizards but not after the wizard ends.

Another issue is CR now does not recognize a change in an ADO.NET data set when using the "Update database" option. It simply does not see that the XSD containing the DS has changed.

# William said on September 11, 2005 9:32 AM:

i think crystal reports is bad specialy when you compare it to oracle development tools its "a step on man kind "to have to deal with CR

# William said on September 13, 2005 3:38 PM:

Whoever said that MS Reporting Services was a Porsche must drive a Yugo.

Try writing a report in MS RS that has 2 groups with tabular data in Group one and Row data in Group 2 and then arrange all the columns so they fit on a landscaped format!! I can do an extremely complicated report in Crystal in an hour and it takes an 8 hour day to do the same report in MS RS. Adding table and columns and rows,,,,, arghh! I can just drag and the data in Crystal without having to do all those extra steps. I can go into preview mode in CR and adjust the data so it looks great in CR. Try doing that in MS RS.

I just don't see the fascination with the Microsoft product.

Even with it's flaws, Crystal is still a much better reporting tool than MS RS.

# William said on September 13, 2005 3:47 PM:

My CR 10 will let me cut and paste multiple fields of data & text.. maybe you need to update to a better version.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CR Sucks!
How about: You can't copy/cut/paste more than a single item at a time, so if you want to move or reproduce some fields/text in another section, you have to move/copy each one one at a time!!

# William said on September 13, 2005 8:11 PM:

i got query engine error. it's not an error that i can catch in my code. Crystal Reports just poped a msgbox, and that's it. So..??? It says nothing about what was wrong. this is a piece of crap. i might as well dump XML and feed it to OpenOffice or Office2003

# William said on September 14, 2005 3:04 AM:

Hmmm, I must say that this is very interesting reading...

Having now used CR9/10 for nealry 2 years it does take some getting used to. But everything that you guys are complaining about in this thread is very easy to get around.

Having used CR for intranet reports for clients using Coldfusion and .Net reports using Visual Studio I can say that it DOES NOT SUCK AT ALL.

Consider this, create a generic report and use the API to change the datasource and properties on the fly, no need to re-edit the report at all.

When you sit down and go through you requirements, CR is the bet thing since sliced bread. I have to agree with the designer and alignment, however there are options to male objects the same size etc as another object, these little things make life easy, or make sure that snap to grid is of at certain times can be a small pain from time to time, but it is a small pain to know that you have a very full reporting solution with its own language to program in to do anything you want it to do.

Come on guys I know the support is not there from business objects but before complaining at the package look at how your approaching it instead.

# William said on September 14, 2005 1:20 PM:

What gets me in RS is that just simple things like ....It takes 5 to 6 seconds to bold text and have the layout designer come back so you can do something else. CR does bold text instantly. It takes 5 to 6 seconds for RS to respond to ANY kind of command. Going from layout to preview is also very painstaking. I can make a change in CR and go to preview and see my changes instantly without is having to do some type of lengthy refresh of the screen.

All this adds to the report creation time for RS.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying CR doesnt have it's flaws. Of course it does, but I don't think RS is ready for prime time yet and from what I can see.. if CR sucks then RS is right there beside it sucking away, but for different reasons. I think by version 3.0 it will probably be the best reporting tool out there and we here at my worksite will probably migrate to it. I think it still needs a lot of work and a lot of things added to make it a finished product. As we know.. MS has both the talent and the money to do it all, if they so desire.

So rather than just saying RS sucks.. I will withhold judgement until v3.0 comes out.

Cheers!

# William said on September 27, 2005 9:09 AM:

I wasnt so impressed with rystal's ability to get data out of a database.. i'd get all sorts of weird errors trying to build my own sql in the Add Command section of crystal, and it seemed to choke on anything over 30 lines of SQL (some of my sqls are 400 lines+ long). In the end i wrote a small vb program that would run my sql against the database and pass the ADO recordset to crystal. It works well and now i only have to contend with not knowing huge amounts about the report designer nor good places to find any info.

The designer crashes routinely when working with the field explorer, but im used to it now and save my work before i even pass the mouse over the field designer. I also have CR on a hotkey on my keyboard so i can start it up again after it crashes (which it does at least 30 times a day when i work with it)

I dont like Crystal much, and i know i could do a lot more with active reports, but there's a lot of back end work to do with AR, filling the data fields yourself. With that flexibility and power comes more work, and it's not what i want to invest in riht now. Maybe later..

# William said on October 6, 2005 9:55 PM:

i hate error repots!!!! every time i go to somthing i will say theres an error report and i should send it and when i do it stills says "theres an error on this page"!!! i bought a game and it does not even let me play it!!!!!!

# William said on October 27, 2005 8:53 PM:

How about every time I run a web report it crashes my IDE. :-(

# William said on November 4, 2005 12:51 PM:

Good lord look at these comments.

Ok, I'm stuck with a program that requires Crystal to do the down and dirty with it. It refers to version 7, that must have been a while back, but the earliest I can get is version 9. I read enough about the latest versions to scare me into not getting it at all, but I do need something to help me out, and this program says Crystal is what it uses and interfaces with.

Y'all think version 9 is old enough that it won't give me heartburn...?

Thanks Phil

# William said on November 4, 2005 5:19 PM:

Oh yes, oh yes, crystal is craptacular. Right now I'm trying to write a report and the software absolutely will not allow me to graph things properly. It insists that it's not valid to graph diddly squat. I took a really great screenshot of the chart expert that shows it asking for two criteria - which are clearly filled in.

# William said on December 6, 2005 12:00 PM:

Crystal is somewhat complex to understand, but it's been #1 for a long time for a reason.

I used to hang screens for a living, but I much prefer Business Intelligence for many reasons, not the least of which is high visibility and you can impact the bottom line.

If you need assistance with Crystal, got to http://www.tek-tips.com

It's the largest tech support site and far exceeds Crystal's own forums.

Again, everyone integrates Crystal for a reason, if you don't understand the product, it will be frustrating, but keep in mind that training is key, and the single most important reason for all of the front end code is so that we can extract information and make good decisions.

That said, hire someone to handle the business intelligence, it's much more complex than you understand, I suspect that you're better off hanging screens.

# William said on December 6, 2005 2:10 PM:

BillyBob - I use Crystal and although I rarely use it much these days, I have quite a bit of experience with it. I really don't like it. Keep in mind that a lot of what people are talking about here is Crystal v 9+ vs something like Microsoft Reporting Services which is a v 1.0 product.

Everyone doesn't integrate Crystal any more. With the advent of VS.NET, I've personally seen a huge decline in adoption, mainly at least at first attributed to the fact that you didn't have design time support to run the report. You had to compile your app and pass the report to a viewer to see it. This was a huge step back. And what did you get? Strongly typed reports. Well, as much as I love strong typing, this is one area where it wasn't all that important. As far as making decsions go, there's little that Crystal can compete with. Look at OLAP, Sql Server Reporting services and any one of a number of products like the SPSS add-in. You can be up and running doing Ph.D level statistical analysis in 20 minutes. You could get there with Crystal but comparatively speaking, that's a 10th version product compared to a version 1 product. By v 2.0 I will be the house that every single advantage, percieved or real will be gone. Testimony to this IMHO is the lack of new books out about Crystal - as compared to Reporting Services. .

Also, I'm not sure I understand your last point. BI is a large area and in just about every company I've worked in, the reporting needs were way to much for one person. Marketing as a department typically has a whole set of needs for BI. Same for sales. Same for Finance. I really doubt any one person could have a truly comprehensive understanding of each of these areas and know how to extract that from a database and build reports accordingly. Knowing how to calculate and analyze NPV or IRR for instance is not that complex, but it's a different beast than looking for the RSquare of a regression or a time series forecast. Then there's the whole micro/macro thing with respect to OLTP vs OLAP. Again, in most industries this distinction is enough to command an entire department or 20 - so it's hard to imagine an analyst individually that could hang in each of these areas comprehensively. Is that the point you were making? If so, I'd love ot hear a little more about how one goes about it.

# Leon said on December 14, 2005 10:07 AM:

I'm a programmer from long time, usually I learn very fast evrey things about programming. I waste 4 days on trying to generate a report from my vb.net program and i still didn't get what i need....
I'm very very disappointed from Crystal Reports

# Visu Pedada said on December 22, 2005 1:03 PM:

Responding to the comment posted by JG on Saturday, September 10, 2005 12:18 AM:

Here is how you can enable the Field Explorer from the Visual Studio:

Click the 'View' menu
Click 'Other Windows'
Click 'Document Outline'

Like some people already mentioned, every product has its pros and cons. And if you dont understand the product quite well it is even frustating. I am not saying that Crystal Report is THE best product available in the market (It is like any other windows based product for that matter) but it is a great tool to compile some simple reports quickly.

# Visu Pedada said on December 30, 2005 7:46 AM:

Leon,

If you can write what specific challenge(s) you are facing while trying to generate a report I am sure you will get a lot of help.

# George said on January 13, 2006 10:12 AM:

I wouldn't say crystal reports sucks as a whole. I would, however, say that the interface, at least in .net, is atrocious. When you click an object, unless your mouse is 100% motionless, the object is picked up for moving, and unlike any windows program, releasing the mouse button does not drop the item. You have to click again...terrible. Try selecting more than one object, copying and pasting them. Can't do it (well, you can, but it doesn't work, again, like any other windows application, again...terrible). Don't try creating a text box with white text, can't see the text while you're typing because it always makes the background of the textbox, while you're typing, white....terrible. Occassionally, the Preview of a report stops creating test data, restarting VS fixes it (not sure if that is VS' or CR's fault). When moving objects, it seems to be completely random whether it moves by one pixel at a time or by a pre-defined grid-space...awesome. The interface/visual designer definately sucks more than anything should be allowed to suck, but, the reporting it does is very powerful and saves a lot of time.

# Rock said on January 30, 2006 11:50 AM:

OH MY GOD!!!!!!

Thanks God I read this article. I spent all morning trying to get a simple report to work. It didn't. I have used Crystal reports for liek 01 years without any problems. But with .NET, it's a different story. What the hell are the people at Crystal Decisions thinking. Clearly, have made a poor decision!!! They should be called Crystal Mud Decisions!

Canadian crap software! I am banning them and moving over to Active Reports or XtraReports. They suck!! Ok....I better calm down now.

breathe in......breathe out......you are now relaxxxxed....

# SAF said on March 15, 2006 1:49 AM:

Crystal Reports "Sucks"!!! NOOOOO!!!!

It sucks BIG TIME!!! It's the most retarted piece of software ever written (I'm using ver XI). Just to set up a JDBC connection, which takes two minutes of point and click in most other tools, takes a frigging DAY in CR.

First of all the documentation sucks, mentions nothing about this. You have to trawl their web site. Where they say you have do like ten different things including modifying configuration files. WTF????!!!

This should be a two minute driver/URL/classname thingie...

# Jeroen Ritmeijer said on April 14, 2006 9:22 AM:

Rarely have I come across a product that generates so much hate and pain
within the software development...

# Ken said on May 2, 2006 3:06 PM:

Three words:

Subreports. Don't. Work.

# Cashman said on June 2, 2006 10:12 AM:

Count me in to the "it sucks" category. I was using XI when I was developing software with VS 2003. I definitely experienced the deployment issues so many have mentioned above, plus in my opinion, one of the most frightfully annoying bugs of all w/ regards to Stored Procedures: Any time I would change the parameter list in a stored procedure that was the datasource for the report, the report would simply not recognize the newly modified list. There is a way to "refresh" the list in Crystal, but it doesn't work!! Even by creating a copy of the stored procedure, naming it something new, then setting the new sproc as the datasource, the report would not recognize the new list! So, any time I would have to change a parameter list, it meant re-creating the report from scratch!! Ouch!! Believe me, I tried everything, even contacted Business Objects several times for support and they simply shrugged there shoulders.

Now here's the great part. We upgraded our development platform from VS 2003 to VS 2005 and of course, Crystal XI is not compatible - why should it be? It sucks!! In order to work with Crystal full version in VS 2005, you have to purchase Crystal XI Release 2. Now one would think that at a minimum, for CHRIST SAKE, release 2 would be at least the same as release 1, not any worse?!?!? Yes?? Is this too much to ask?? Apparently so. Release 2 not only has ALL the bugs of release 1, but heck, there's a few NEW ones as well!!! For example, the .RecordSelectionFormula property (the property which allows you to dynamically specify report filters at runtime), simply doesn't work at all. You can even pass a complete garbage string like : MyReport.RecordSelectionFormula = "Crystal Reports Sucks Big Time" and Crystal won't even raise an error. What a piece of crap. We now have dozens of reports that have to be re-written to workaround this stupid problem. Oh, and the parameter list bug I mentioned earlier - still there.

I used to like Crystal Reports a long time ago. It always had some quirks, but man, the product is definitely moving backwards. Support for the product is pretty much useless, and the knowledgebase on their website is down more often then up. I am now getting ready to upgrade to SQL Server 2005 and without a doubt, will be HAPPILY DUMPING CRYSTAL REPORTS in exchange for SQL's reporting services. Good riddin's.

# Shaun said on June 14, 2006 9:42 AM:

Crystal Reports is STILL a piece of crap. I've hated it since version 7 and I hate it now more than ever. There are things that are way better than having to use Crystal Reports... like having your nose slammed in a door or thin strips of bamboo jammed under your finger-nails. Even shopping at Ikea is better than working with CR!

# Dave said on July 5, 2006 11:59 PM:

Hahahaha brilliant. I totally agree - CR sucks big time - it always has and always will. I have had to use it on and off during contract work for the last 10 years and every time I use it I vow 'Never again'. It has always been a buggy fragile peice of crap. HOW it ever got past version 2 will be one of the enduring mysteries of the universe.

The other enduring mystery is why Microsoft never got round to detaching the MS Access reports from the Access engine and made it a standalone reporting tool. It has ALWAYS been a better reporting tool than CR. Strange...

Shaun- sorry buddy, CR is <b>BAD<b>, but I'd still take CR over a day in Ikea ANYTIME!!!

# duh said on July 12, 2006 3:05 PM:

i have worked with crystal off and on for awhile. at first i sort of liked it, then i thought it sucked for awhile.

finally i have been able to really dive into it, working with it from many different angles. converting older reports that someone else did for instance where they create 5-6 reports that all did the same thing into 1 report with parameters to do the same. I have gotten to do some push reports (ado .net data set ) of some reports that used to be pull reports so that i can make the solution asynchronous and more responsive.

now i feel pretty heavy weight with the product, and i can say with confidence and authority,



the product suX!!!

what a pain in the butt. what a piece of crap that always breaks with slightest thing. You inherit a report and you think, hey this programmer really sucked, why did they create 6 reports instead of just making it do more with some parameters that switched the behavior. then you go to do it yourself, and you find out why. because there is no way of doing it. because it is just shy of being actually programmable.

love the interface by the way (reminds me of flash) where you have to chase the spaghetti all over the place to figure out what something is doing. hey, i see this formula is being used. where? another formula? on the actual report itself. oh, there is no easy way to tell? no problem crystal, i will just spend the rest of my day going through each possibilty, manually checking.

haha! and the push report. ahh! what a joke all the work, and ran into so many other troubles, the worst one is still not solved and is just ignored as far as i can tell:
"The request could not be submitted for background processing."

cute. funny thing is, the original report which was crystal also, still runs just fine, just not the cool new push one, that has this fine error in it even after all hot fixes  applied.

i also like the various bugs that are hard to explain. like when you go to add a text field to a report and it crashes the environment. thats fun.

what else? oh i guess that about covers it.

i agree that the access report was a lot smoother and worked better. have not tried sql reporting services yet.

just wanted to vent. not really a choice because they already have so much here in crystal , but i will definitly not recommend doing further work in it.

crystal, you guys suck. please don't tkae that personally. :)

# duh said on July 12, 2006 3:10 PM:

oh wait. i'm not finished. my favorite thing comes to changing underlying datastores.

say for instance, you want to change it from a table to a sproc. no problem. but what if there are two tables and you want to use one sproc (or two for that matter)... crap. 1000 times slower.

ok... but it can be done. there is a way! completely redo the report and this time use a sproc as the underlying datasource. (when you delete the existing datasource instead of doing the mapping thing, it deletes whatever is on the report) ... yeah!! no problem, after i get done doing that crystal, mind if i slop through someones spaghetti code that you practically forced them to create? didn't think you would mind.

*actually i heard there was another way to more easily and more better change the underlying datasource: use crystal reports prior to version 9 or 8.5 or something. hey thats even cooler crystal. let me go look around for somene that kept their older version since it works better.

duh!

# livid said on July 25, 2006 6:09 PM:

Need therapy, using Crystal now. CR is about as useful as dogshit. Plain and simple. It's no better than dogshit. This ***-ass product needs to be tricked into doing anything useful. Shame on all responsible.

# Ben said on July 26, 2006 4:02 AM:

I agree with Dave: MS Access reporting is far superior to CR.

I've been in correspondance with CR to create a multiple series scatter chart; something a 12 year-old might need to do for their science homework. Their help docs are useless; providing only a dictionary definition of a scatter chart: patronising AND useless.

The support person said creating a mutliple series scatter chart "may be possible to do, but would have a fairly complex and lengthy work around", and referred me to the CR "experts", who would produce the workaround for a consultancy fee.

"the world's leading reporting tool"! Right! There are 12 year olds everywhere laughing...

AVOID CRYSTAL REPORTS AT ALL COSTS: - Your livelihood and sanity may depend on it!!

# IHackedMyDoghead said on August 17, 2006 1:08 PM:

Well, I just used it for the first time - a productivity tool, HAH. Took me half a day to add the visuals and 5 minutes (literally) to write the logic. Would have been 30 minutes to spit out the whole page as a string of HTML. Give me "for (int i=0; i<6; i++)" any day instead of this visual crap - I've been doing that since I was 13 and I'm 49 now, works every time and when you tell people it'll take 30 minutes to do, it will instead of all day.

# Eric said on August 29, 2006 12:43 PM:

CR does suck. Type the word DISAPPEAR in their knowledge base and you can over 300 hits. You could probably think of more words that would generate even bigger hits. The fact is, CR was developed then bought by an entirely different company. Either their programmers suck (which I doubt), or their management is crap. F CR.

# Dave said on September 15, 2006 9:39 AM:

I was beginning to think I was just a thick twat and couldn't make it work. My god i couldn't agree more with 90% of the comments on this website. I have used Crystal for many years now and with each susequent release, I have hoped things would get better. Ha ha - instead they got steadily worse first of at 8.5 in some attempt to get a load of license revenue they invented the mysterious APS server some sort of confusionware which makes previously working websites not work and imposes an annoying licesing limit, which you can buy your way out of by selling your company / house.. Then came version 9 - well in an attempt to improve our 8.5 RDC component based reporting system we (stupidly) upgraded to version 9 at a cost of around 20,000 (ouch). This software ended up on the shelf / still it makes a handy bookend, i probably could have one made from 24 crt Gold for the same money.. Now, I must be a twat - because depite all my previous experiences i recently "upgraded" to version XI - straight out of the box, guess what, it doesn't work. Joy and rapture. I am know going through an agonisingly painful "support" call to try and resolve. Well done BO by the way for making this the most complex piece of middleware in the world - Are you sure you can't manage to squeese a few more services into the next release 13 in total !!. BO Thankyou for wasting many hours of my life titting about with your crap products...

# Dave said on September 15, 2006 9:50 AM:

I was beginning to think I was just a thick twat and couldn't make it work. My god I couldn't agree more with 90% of the comments on this website. I have used Crystal for many years now and with each subsequent release, I have hoped things would get better. Ha ha - instead they got steadily worse first of at 8.5 in some attempt to get a load of license revenue they invented the mysterious APS server some sort of confusionware which makes previously working websites not work and imposes an annoying licensing limit, which you can buy your way out of by selling your company / house.. Then came version 9 - well in an attempt to improve our 8.5 RDC component based reporting system we (stupidly) upgraded to version 9 at a cost of around 20,000 (ouch). This software ended up on the shelf / still it makes a handy bookend, i probably could have one made from 24 crt Gold for the same money.. Now, I must be a twat - because despite all my previous experiences I recently "upgraded" to version XI - straight out of the box, guess what, it doesn't work. Joy and rapture. I am now going through an agonisingly painful "support" call to try and resolve. Well done BO by the way for making this the most complex piece of middleware in the world - Are you sure you can't manage to squeeze a few more services into the next release 13 in total !!. BO Thank you for wasting many hours of my life titting about with your crap products... My advice, don't touch this software. You may as well slam your b*llocks in the fridge door as the results of using this software are similar. You have been warned...

# SSRS SUCKS MORE said on September 19, 2006 3:21 PM:

Either you guys are idiots or you have never used Crystal and don't realize the minimal functionality that SQL Reporting Services offers. I have spent the last week evaluating SSRS and am greatly dissapointed. I came up with a list of over 250 items that SSRS could not do. As for all you Access reporters, your probably the only people to ever purchase Microsoft's "Bob" product.

# William said on September 27, 2006 12:27 AM:

Actually, we're idiots and we don't realize the minimal functionality. What kind of a33hole comment is that? I guess anyone that disagrees with you is either an idiot or uninformed. Well, instead of getting into a freestyle battle, let me just respond. The fact there are 250 items means zilch unless you need those features. I'd honestly *love* to see your list b/c if you even know of 250 features in Crystal then you are fairly well versed in it and I suspect you're not nearly as strong in SSRS. A week evaluating it huh? If you know 250 features of Crystal, and have spent a week learning SSRS, could it possibly be that the many of your shortcomings are more about your lack of knowledge than about product difficiency? Personally, I spent two weeks at Microsoft developing the new Business Intelligence exams and with two full weeks dedicated to nothing but it, I can tell you we had a long way to go. That's conjecture so I'll concede the point if you can post 20 substantive features that are truly missing - as opposed as you not knowing how to get there. But screw all that for a minute. I can list at least 500 things I can write in C# that Crystal can't do. Does that mean my C# skills exceed that of crystal? If so it's nice to know b/c I must be a real bad a55. More features doesn't in and of itself mean superiority. By your reasoning, a fully loaded Yugo would be superior to a vintage Rolls Royce b/c it has more features. I'll concede it's a highly individualized thing, if you need those 250 features then you have a point to some extent. However you don't touch upon the quality differences in the features that both share. If SSRS does 10 things which we do all the time much better than Crystal and the other 250 features cited aren't something someone uses, they SSRS is better for them. It doesn't make that person an idiot or ignorant. But let me ask you this, when you say there's at least 250 features lacking, are you talking about an actual feature or a way of doing something? If it's a matter of being able to do something with a GUI or some product specifc method, then that doesn't mean it's missing necessarily. Considering the extensibility of SSRS, I'm at a loss to find anything 'missing' in the sense it can't be done. Another thing that I'd point out. SSRS is what version? Crystal is what version? The fact a new product can even provide 1/2 the features of something so much more mature speaks volumes. However I'm not conceding product deficiencies by that statement, just pointing out that even if it were true, for a V1 product to even come close to a v11 product is prima facie proof of comparative superiority. Test SSRS v1 against Crystal v1 (or hell, v8) and there's no question SSRS is comparatively much more powerful. I don't believe there's 250 features difference in V11 but I'll wait to see your proof. Now, to put some perspective on something. Report writing is beginner stuff. You don't need to be a programmer to do most reporting and in many cases, you can be an expert report writer with only a minimal understanding of programming. I despise Access but having a Crystal guy snob as Access guy is a serious case of the pot calling the ketlle black don't you think? I don't think having Report Writing skills makes anyone 3:33t enough to snob anyone. Anyway, here's what I propose. Post 20 of your 250 items. Since you already have your list - this shouldn't be anything more than a copy and paste job. I'll openly challenge you on this. If I can't do all 20 with SSRS, then I'll post front page on my blog that you're right and I'm wrong. Time permitting I'd like to take a shot at all 250 if you're willing to post them. And honestly, I'll eat crow if I'm wrong. And that's me claiming I'll do all 20. IMHO, even if I only got 18 or 19 of them, that would put a big dent in your claim of superiority but that's another story b/c I don't think you can name 20 let alone 250.

# Bill's House O Insomnia : Comment of the week - Sql Server Reporting Services vs. Crystal said on September 27, 2006 12:47 AM:

PingBack from http://msmvps.com/blogs/williamryan/archive/2006/09/27/Comment-of-the-week-_2D00_-Sql-Server-Reporting-Services-vs.-Crystal.aspx

# Mahesh Chand said on October 5, 2006 2:54 PM:

CR SUCKS. 110% Agree. I've been using "unfortunately" crystal reports for many years now and I've not seen any worse product than CR. Not only it has horrible UI (throws me 10 years back when I started VB 3.0), functionality and it's performance.... every thing just sucks. We really need a good product out there..

# TK said on October 10, 2006 8:02 AM:

I CANNOT USED NESTED SUBREPORTS IN CRYSTAL, YET MSACCESS ALLOWS ME TO DO THISS???????????? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH CRYSTAL SUCKS, MOST OF THE TIME

# KWs said on October 26, 2006 10:55 AM:

Does anyone know if you can access data in SPSS through Crystal XI? I am relatively new to the product (Crystal that is) and am still on the fence as to what "crowd" I am in, but these blogs are singing my tune! Any help you have to offer would be greatly appreciated.

# indentured1 said on November 4, 2006 7:26 AM:

I used to hate CR back in the v8 days. We were forced to implement it via ASP ActiveX garbage and it was terrible. More recently I was tasked to use it in a ASP.NET environment & was scared. I took one look at the bundled version in VS and told my boss that they *had* to buy the standalone. Why? The standalone product is SO much better. So we coughed up for CR XI r2 Developer. Anyhow, we implemented it on our web & it went suprisingly well. Why do I like it? Because we can get the business folks trained in how to use it & they can write their own damn reports & publish them on our intranet site for the rest of the organization to run. Empowering your customers with writing their own reports means less time for me and my crew having to write them. I'd say that if you hated it, try the latest Standalone version. You'll be suprised. On the sucks side, it's WAY too expensive IMHO.

# Jportelas said on November 14, 2006 8:30 AM:

I think you should count me on the "I better find something better than Crystal" side. It´s been quite a pain to deal with all the problems it puts in my way everytime I want to develop a report, I only use it when need it to be "printable", cause it seems one of the only good thing it´s got.

# ST said on December 12, 2006 2:19 PM:

Okay, I'm not going to say it "sucks".

I think it is "okay with potential" but with so many "freaking quirks" it is so painful to be almost useless without a devotion of a lot of time to figuring it out.

Before I forget to ask, WHAT ARE THE ALTERNATIVES?  I really want to know.

I've used ColdFusion's ReportBuilder, and it is "okay but not as powerful", but with "way fewer quirks".

+++++

I started with Crystal with ver 4.

Then 4.5, and 5.0.

When they had it working on IIS 1.0, it was simple and helpful.

Then came 6.0, 7.0, which I missed, and then 8.0, 8.5 and 9.0.

They started changing the object model, or creating new ones.  Its like every version had a new object model, and some new fangled DLL or component to use instead of the one you just used to using from the last version.

I missed 10, and now have the chance to revisit it at 11.

But quite frankly, as "potentially useful" as it could be, I'm tired of it "quirks".  If I can switch my company to something simpler that works, I will.  BUT what is there?

We are NOT going down the .NET road.

And I would prefer to get off the Microsoft road completely too, which is why the ColdFusion report builder looks good to me.

But is there anything else?

# anonymous said on December 18, 2006 7:11 PM:

Crystal Reports is complete garbage.

It's almost an insult to garbage to say that.

One thing that really ticks me off is a popup I get from this POS which states "Award winning support!".

Yeah right, first of all the only reason they could pretend to make the claim is from the vast amounts of support they have to give just to make the claim that they have a product in the first place.

Secondly the "Award" is a yearly affair they get from the same magizine JavaPro. I don't know JavaPro, I never read it. But I can promise you that I never will either. If JavaPro is selling these "Awards" to just any moron on the street then they can't be a trust worthy source.

Here are some alternatives to Crystal Reports:

Open Office

A free printer driver

All kinds of open source programs

A $15 printer driver

Active PDF

Every single one of these is 1000 times better than Crystal Reports.

# php_guy said on January 3, 2007 2:45 PM:

I would rather develop a report from scratch using php, MySQL and HTML/CSS.  HONESTLY, it would get done faster and be much more manageable.