Crystal Reports?

[lanmicro]

Hi Guys,

My customer has a bunch of Crystal Reports that he would like his customers to run on demand. 

Is it possible to to create a NTWS app that will run the Crystal Report from a NetTalk6 browse and send the output to a PDF for the enduser to access in their browser?

[Bruce]

Hi Greg,

I've no experience with Crystal at all, but if you can make a procedure, that runs the report, and generates the PDF, without any user input, then yes, it should be possible.

cheers
Bruce

[kevin plummer]

In theory yes but you need to implement Crystal via the templates in your clarion app first. Crystal also has a very expensive licensing model and if you are hosting, even though the client has the reports I believe you would have to have a license to publish the reports. I've looked at Crystal in the past but the licensing model seemed to be prohibitive in implementing it even though it has some nice features.

[lanmicro]

Hi Kevin,

I don't have Crystal Reports myself, my client does. 

Are you saying that I would need a license agreement for each person that might access the program and run the Crystal Report?  If this is true then the cost might be prohibitive for my customer.

Would that extend to current license holders, by that I mean people on site that currently have a license and want to run the report from a NTWS app?

[Rene Simons]

Hi,

When you go to

http://www.klarisoft.com/KSNews_84.htm

You'll find a template set which handles Crystal Reports.

A long, long time ago I have used it and it worked fine.

The template costs about USD 50,00

Crystal Reports is now owned by SAP. So the price tag might be complicated (like SAP  )

Cheers
Rene Simons

[lanmicro]

Hi Rene,

Yes, I know about the Klarisoft template.  I have used it in the past. 

My current question is about the SAP licensing. 

It looks like there is a separate run-time server license that is required for Crystal Report access for external ( non employee or contractor ) users.  I'm just trying to verify that with any current users of NTWS.

[kevin plummer]

There used to be a web server license which would cover anyone logging onto 1 server. It had a large price tag. In any case if your client is hosting his own web server then he would need to buy or upgrade.

I looked at it a couple of years ago in my desktop app as it was a must have for 1 client but the licensing model put me off.

[lanmicro]

Hi Kevin,

My customer has talked w/t SAS and they say if their programmer uses their API then the licensing thing becomes a non issue. 

I will be looking into this more so I will let you guys know here.