Beautiful Reports with a lot of pain (Business Objects Crystal Reports XI Standard Edition)

Member Name: chthys

Product:	Business Objects Crystal Reports XI Standard Edition
Date:	02/05/09 (107 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Feature rich, runs on any major database.

Disadvantages: Extremely difficult to install and keep running in the field.

Crystal Reports is currently the industry standard in report writing. It is very versatile, in that it can read a wide variety of databases and is extremely rich in features. It produces reports of highly professional quality, which is its main attraction. It is easy to learn, but extremely tedious to work with. It is also extremely slow and riddled with obvious bugs, which are often not fixed in newer versions. There is one bug in particular that I encounter at least 50 times per day. It has been in every release of Crystal since at least version 8.5. How do I know? Because there used to be an article in the Seagate knowledge base with a workaround for it in version 8.5. I have to use this workaround 50 times per day in all versions.

Crystal is especially difficult to deploy. The .NET features are notoriously unstable, and you should expect to spend many man hours troubleshooting Crystal issues on individual workstations accross your user base who will not be able to print anything. Frustration among end-users (e.g. my customers) can be very high. It is not uncommon for a PC workstation to have more than one software application that is dependent on Crystal, which will have installed conflicting versions of the product. This is a tech support nightmare. Crystal Reports is an extremely unpopular product among us computer programmers. Personally, I can't thing of a single software package anywhere that is more overrated. All versions and editions have serious problems. But you don't need to take my word for it. Here are links to two long blogs by programmers who express their frustration with this product. There are others you can easily find with Google if you include some expletives in your search criterion.

http://secretgeek.net/CrystalDodo.asp
http://unbecominglevity.blogharbor.com/blog/_arch ives/2005/12/21/1474036.html

Summary: Only expletives will do the product justice.

Variety of features:
Reliability:
User friendly:
Installation:
Update possibilites: