Good luck... I've built a report generator for us, and it's been a work in progress for the last year :)
As far as I know, crystal 8.5 has its own scripting language now that *gasp* looks just like ASP. Working with 8 however, I've come up with a way of using stored procedures for my dynamic parameters. However dynamic reporting itself would require some pretty hefty programming. If dynamic reporting is necessary, I'd investigate some OLAP reporting solutions; Oracle, Cognos are the first that come to mind. It's a neat way to look at reporting. What we do here for all of the bizarre report requests is have a scheduled task in sql server that dumps a tonne of data to excel for a pivot table. It's a three dimensional way to report on data that can be quite effective if the users are trained on how to use it. However, given my experience with end users, they aren't all smart enough to think in terms of pivot tables. Given that your needs include an editable format, have you considered using MS Word and COM to report? It's not pretty, but it can be done. Either way, in a nutshell, what you want can't be answered in a day or so. I wish you the best of luck on your quest. :) -----Original Message----- From: Michael Vinson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, February 04, 2002 6:18 AM To: CF-Talk Subject: crystal reports vs... ? Hi Listers, I'm peering into my crystal snowball and I see dozens of complex reports in my near future. These reports need to be generated from dynamic (server-side) databases & whipped up to the user in an editable format (rtf/doc). I have used an open-source Perl script (now an open source kit available at http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=RTF-Writer). I need to forego the Perl solution because 1) My Perl skills (not there) & more important, 2) I hope to train someone to build reports in a Win environment w/familiar interface widgets, etc. What I'm looking for is anyone with some experiences generating reports on-the-fly ... which toolkits, how much$, pitfalls, etc. The target platform is a win2k-server-based intranet with a variety of possible datasources (access 2k, sql server 7, oracle, etc.) Finally, I need to make a decision, say, today or tomorrow, buy the software and produce, say, yesterday ;) Thanks! Mike ______________________________________________________________________ Why Share? Dedicated Win 2000 Server · PIII 800 / 256 MB RAM / 40 GB HD / 20 GB MO/XFER Instant Activation · $99/Month · Free Setup http://www.pennyhost.com/redirect.cfm?adcode=coldfusionc FAQ: http://www.thenetprofits.co.uk/coldfusion/faq Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-talk@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
