My first shot at Crystal Reports ....

Past 5 days I have spent putting my head into migrating 5 reports from Crystal Enterprise 8.5 to 10.0. I was wished "Best of Luck" when I started my task and soon I figured out what it meant. With ZERO experience on a Reporting tool I was in for some serious "fun".

The day 1 was spent in figuring out how to tweak the tables to get the desired result just to discover that the approach totally "rubbish" especially if you have schema changes. After breaking my head in search of right steps .. end of day 4, I came up with 5 reports .. Last day was pretty much integration with the .NET and loads of testing. I felt quite relieved that the effort was not in vain .. though I must admit it could have been much simpler .. In the past, I have seen developers crib about Crystal Reports. However, what amazes me is that it is still used by such a wide developer community. So the question is: Is the tool so bad, or are the developers struggling to learn it?In my opinion its a mix of both!

Below are some of the things (in my opinion) which Crystal Enterprise 10.0 lacks and I hope are easier in the later versions:

1. The designer is not developer friendly and does an average job.

2. There is only a specific way to do a task and the developer must know how.

3. The online documentation is less .. googling does not help and content in form of books is more (not my style of learning)

4. The tool is not consistent and there are issues resolving the references especially if you are using Tables and columns directly as variables in the report.

5. Never save the report with the Preview .. does not work!

6. Using the subreports is tricky, needs parameter linking and has some limitations.

7. Crystal Viewer at times gives weird results and the developer is left clueless why a specific thing is occuring .. easier solution is to reinstall the software.

Some learnings ...

1. Ask the right persons the right questions

2. Know the features of a tool and requirements thoroughly before starting a task

3. Never get stuck up if an approach fails .. keep thinking about alternate approaches

Hopefully this reporting experience was a neat one and would help me somewhere down the road ...