Report generator

reinaldocrespo · Post by **reinaldocrespo** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 7:27 pm

You've heard it folks. And that's one opinion that deserves respect.

I won't waste my time with CR. Thank you Enrico.

Reinaldo.

R.F. · Post by **R.F.** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:30 pm

he he he

I have a totally different opinion on Crystal Reports.

About two years ago we had the need to find a fast-reliable SQL based report designer for one of our most important customers, an insurance company.

We developed over 200 reports in RPT files, some Informix based, some DBF based, the most important thing here, was the capability of the report to be exported to several different formats, including Word, Excel, PDF, and send them by mail.

Crystal let us to fast develop the reports needed without touching the FiveWin source code, that helped us a lot, because whenever the customer asked for a new report, we simply made the visual design in Crystal, generate the RPT file and then added to a DBF file the report name, report description and location of the RPT file, so the user user simply opens the "REPORT GALLERY" browse, from the REPORTS MENU, then choose the new report and done, the Crystal preview window is shown as a MDCHILD window of the FW application.

The SQL based reports were easy to do, however the DBFs reports were a little difficult since they were based on a single temporary DBF file, of course you can use several DBFs to generate a single report but to be honest, this is not a good idea under Crystal, the fastest way for DBF Crystal design is to generate a temporary DBF file, and design the report using a single DBF.

What we made for DBF reports, was to use a SCRIPT tool that let us to generate that temporary file out of the FW source code, so the name of the script was also included in the reports dbf, whenever you choose a report of the REPORT GALLERY and the field SCRIPT is not empty, first the script is run and then the report preview is launched.

Of course Crystal is not a perfect tool, is not free, but it's a good Reporting tool in my opinion.

Otto · Post by **Otto** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 11:20 pm

Hello Rene,

That is exactly my experience, too. I also prepare the reports in my application and with CR I only have one dbf-file without indexes.
German Umlaute and indexes aren't so well supported by CR.

I think the generator you use depends very much on what forms you need. For easy forms like invoices, etc. I prefer EasyReport with Fivewin because I always found it very difficult to get CR running on a clients system. Many times I had to install the full version of CR.
So if you have many users this is a bit a problem or if you have a demo of your program which you would like to distribute without installation problems. Also the end user interface is easy to use.

Does the actual version of CR still make standalone RPT-files? The version which is included in VS2005 doesn't.

Regards
Otto

George · Post by **George** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 2:23 am

Hi fellows fivewiners,

I think we do need:

A) FWH Report generator. (Easy Report is not easy to use and does not support PDF). I support Silvio in this project.
B) A Browse like Manuel Mercado TSBrowse

A year ago I believed that an IDE was important. But now I do think that with Workshop and Multi-Edit we can develop any software. I am sorry Otto but is my opinion that FWH does not need any IDE, because all IDE put some obstacle into our software development.

Regards

George

Sun Jan 21, 2007 9:35 am

George wrote:A year ago I believed that an IDE was important. But now I do think that with Workshop and Multi-Edit we can develop any software. I am sorry Otto but is my opinion that FWH does not need any IDE, because all IDE put some obstacle into our software development.

I agree. We not need of an IDE but we need of a 32 bit replacement for Borland Resource Workshop. The resource editors I tried are far less featured than BRW.

EMG

Sun Jan 21, 2007 9:39 am

RF wrote:I have a totally different opinion on Crystal Reports.

That's your right. But I have a lot of complex reports that would be simply impossible to build using Crystal Reports.

EMG

Otto · Post by **Otto** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 9:57 am

Maybe I don’t know how to use Workshop and Multi-Edit exactly.
Is there a way to substitute the ID-numbers through friendly names?

Regards
Otto

Sun Jan 21, 2007 10:14 am

Yes, just use #defines. But I don't recommend it because it's a waste of time to find big amount of new and appropriate names.

EMG

Post by **Antonio Linares** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 12:31 pm

Otto,

Here you have a tutorial video about UEStudio and FWH:
http://video.google.es/videoplay?docid= ... 1295&hl=es

Better video quality here:
http://www.uploading.com/files/VQ0JG9OK ... 1.zip.html

reinaldocrespo · Post by **reinaldocrespo** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 3:36 pm

With all being said;

--I think we may conclude that the issue of the report generator is one important land mark we still need to clear in the Fw community. More so than an IDE. Perhaps TReport may be used as the base for this project?

As far as a 32bit resource editor, I'm currently using Resource Builder. It does very well, it is reasonably priced, and I was able to import the very same .rc file that workshop created.

Reinaldo.

Rochinha · Post by **Rochinha** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 4:18 pm

Antonio

I suggest use other upload site. This uploading forces a window s_e_x sites open in our desktop.

Thanks

Otto · Post by **Otto** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 5:39 pm

What is the conclusion of this threat?

Do Silvio, Nop, Biel, areang, Armando Picon, jose_murugosa, Maurilio Viana, George start an open source project and if yes what is the timeframe we can expect a working prototype.

Regards
Otto

Silvio · Post by **Silvio** » Sun Jan 21, 2007 11:32 pm

While You found a conclusion for this threat I'm working...
and perhaps I found a solution for print a pdf fron Preview using tpdf class and another class modified ....CLASS TSalXLS -> TSalpdf but I think make it only for report class not for printer class

Maurilio Viana · Post by **Maurilio Viana** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 10:46 am

Otto wrote:Hello Maurilio,
Please read the whole sentence. I don’t believe that you are able to develop a ReportGenerator as a FiveWin open source project.
I am in this community since version 1.4 of FiveWin (I think it was 1994) and I know this group. I think at the moment you do not find
Fivewinners who contribute.

Right. Now I understand what you said. It wasn't clear to me in 1st time...

Maurilio, if your photo is up to date you are one of the new generation Fivewinners and time is not so as valuable for you as for people
who are 20 years older and must earn their money.

Otto, I have 31 years old and work with FW since FW 1.92.

Best regards,
Maurilio

Silvio · Post by **Silvio** » Mon Jan 22, 2007 11:27 am

I'm workin with Fw since Fw 1.4 + clipper5.2