Dear Valery!
Thank you for good question.
I think, this set of functions is given now by all leaders from the
three specified by you.
Otherwise they would not be among leaders. :)
Therefore us choose for some additional functions:
Storage of reports in XML, speed of development and formation of
reports, time for training to job and time for integration,
convenience of use, full initial texts of server components in edition
Enterprise, the compact size, floppy and understandable architecture,
set of Delhi/CBuilder versions wich FastReport supports, etc.
These additions is much greater - some from them are already so
obvious and necessary for us, that we do not reflect on them at all.
And for our customers they became a determinative at a choice.
But I recommend to not believe me!
Try all products (all have trial versions. Download our trial here:
http://www.fast-report.com/en/download/download.php?BID=16
) to be absolutely confident what this report generator will arrange
of you.
Thursday, June 1, 2006, 2:11:04 AM, you wrote:
nbc> We have been using Crystal Reports as our report engine for 5 years and we
nbc> aren't happy with this even though they've fixed a lot since version 7.
nbc> We think of switching to something else but because the way how we use
nbc> reports is rather complex we need the report engine to be very flexible and
nbc> sophisticated. We keep reports and their subreports information in the
nbc> database (report name, report file name, database query, etc.) and have one
nbc> generic code to take care of all our reports (about 110 altogether).
nbc> As I can see there are three major report engines on the market today: Rave,
nbc> Fast Reports and Report Builder.
nbc> If some of them was able to do the following we would probably switch to it:
nbc> 1. use the same generic code for all reports and select report by name (or
nbc> somehow else) at runtime;
Yes, of course.
nbc> 2. assign database queries (in some apps BDE, in some other - ADO) to the
nbc> report and its subreports at runtime;
Yes. W/o problrms.
nbc> 3. embed word, excel, .bmp or .jpg file into the report at runtime;
HTML, PDF, RTF, XML, Jpeg, Bmp, Gif, Tiff, Plain text, CSV.
nbc> 4. show in the report the image (.bmp, .jpg) taken from BLOB field;
Yes.
nbc> 5. export report into .pdf, word, excel, ascii when it is being generated
nbc> and after it was generated;
Yes.
nbc> 6. manipulate data in the report during its generation: calculated fields,
nbc> showing/hiding report sections depends on data;
Yes. More over - internal script engine with 4 (four) scripting
languages - PascalScript, C++Script, JScript, VB Script. You can give
some or any of these languages to your customers.
nbc> 7. spread records from left to right (similar to crosstab in Crystal -
nbc> analogue to excel spread sheet).
FastReport has cross-tab and vertical bands - for advanced cross-tab
reports.
nbc> 8. design report without having actual data ready in the database.
Yes.
nbc> Thanks in advance, I appreciate any comments.
You are welcome.
--
Best regards,
Michael Philippenko mailto:✉fast-report.com
Fast Reports - cross-platform multi-language solutions for developers
http://www.fast-report.com