You probably know that Crystal was bought by Business Objects last year. Crystal is a great product with a horrible support reputation. That’s not about individual support people (I spoke with an awesome one last night) but just an overall problem. I have suffered plenty as well. I will never get past the experience of upgrading from 6.0 to 8.0 and how it horribly shattered many of my client applications and the deployment nightmares I went through (and my famous $500 phone bill for calling the free support line in Canada). And still, when I do have a problem, I sometimes cannot find the solution to it (granted at this point I have wierd problems, but still….)

But they are really trying. Now they have a .NET Developer Zone. It’s still a work in progress, but the more we use it, the better it will get.

I know that we all want it to be a good resource. So use it and if you don’t like it, let them know about it. Let them know what they can do to make it good so that we don’t roll our eyes when talking about Crystal Reports.

This is the tool I have used for years and am still using it even though I do keep looking over at ActiveReports and SQL Reporting Services. The hook for me is I know how to use Crystal. I only run into trouble once in a while, but I just don’t wnat to have to spend 4 hours researching a problem and still not come up with a solution.

I have been trying to figure out why my crystal reports are mysteriously growing to 2+MB in one of my applications. Ummm DUH – I kind of forgot that I had embedded a watermark in them and that file is over 1MB. I actually got them to call me to help me about it (awesome tech support guy who has been with Crystal for 7 years). I think sometimes I am too quick to get aggravated by Crystal.

Now I have to figure out how to either shrink the watermark or I was told I can deploy the rpt files outside of the dlls.

I have always had problems writing cd’s. This is with 2 different cdr’s and lots of different software over the course of many many years. I would have to toss about 2 cd’s for everyone written. So I basically avoid it like the plague. But I just downloaded an ISO image and discovered that Windows XP has built in software and I don’t have to struggle any more. I just dragged and dropped the file to the cd in windows explorer and xp handled the rest. Finally. Thanks to whomever put that in there.

Of course I still have to test that it worked…

Okay I confess. I literally copied the ISO so I had to toss 2 cd’s after all. Then read the in your face ISO instructions and downloaded ISO Recorder (note there’s an XP and a new XPSP2 Beta version) and also note this is shareware. If you use it enough to justify thanking the creator, click on that PayPal button. This makes it pain free – right click on the ISO file and you’re almost done. Thanks Alex!!

Posted from BLInk!